


Catwalk

by Rynfinity



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Consensual Underage Sex, Implied Relationships, M/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 12:01:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 58,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4834580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rynfinity/pseuds/Rynfinity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That's usually where Leah comes in especially handy.  She's the best <i>reverse wingman</i> in the business.  Whenever anyone gets too friendly, she's right there reminding the unlucky loser - male, female; his androgynous looks draw everybody - that Loki is off the market.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

~~o~~  
New York City, USA  
Present day  
~~o~~

"Are you sure? Because I can come with you." Leah coughs into the crook of her elbow (she always does; she claims it's because her mother is a nurse and reminds the rest of them they're being disgusting when they don't follow her example). "I'm fine. Really."

Loki rolls his eyes. Leah’s been running on fumes for days now. They all have, yes, but she's the only one who'd come into the show with a nice case of bronchitis. "No,” he insists. “You go rest. I'll just go down to the lobby bar... I'll be back before you know it." He has no intention whatsoever of spending his entire evening cooped up in this hotel - it's their last night in town, they're leaving the country in two days, and everyone else (including the dictatorial little ass of a designer, who won't ever let his models drink because they might end up bloated) is at the wrap party - but if he spills any of that Leah will never agree to dividing and conquering. "Please," he wheedles, putting on his best sadly worried face. "Just go to bed. I promise I'll text if I need you."

He watches her all the way to the door of her room. It isn't until she's safely inside, with the swanky golden "resting, quiet please" tag swinging from her doorknob, that he dares turn his phone off.

Loki doesn't bother getting dressed to go out. He'd cleaned up carefully after his last stroll to the end of the catwalk – regardless of the many other rules he religiously disregards, his skin is a business asset; he’s always careful to treat it accordingly - and jeans and a t-shirt suit his current purposes nicely. He doesn't plan to be out and about as _Lang D'Argent, supermodel, darling of cameras everywhere_ ; he just wants to escape this part of the city unscathed and get an increasingly rare chance to be nobody.

Nobody with a drink in his hand, pretending to watch pointless sports in a seedy bar somewhere, preferably. The kind of bar where he won't be recognized... or hit on.

That's usually where Leah comes in especially handy. She's the best, well, _reverse wingman_ in the business. Whenever anyone gets too friendly, she's right there reminding the unlucky loser - male, female; his androgynous looks draw everybody - that Loki is off the market.

Which he is, but not because of Leah. Not because of anyone… at least, not anyone who exists in his life anymore.

Just two more days and he'll be home in Norway, away from this place and its hard, hard memories. Done with another fucking season.

~

It's warm out outside. Too warm, on top of which it’s raining lightly. Loki grits his teeth; his hair goes fucking _insane_ in this kind of humidity. Which will only help all the more with his quest for anonymity, true. Still, that doesn't mean he can't hate it.

He shrugs off the doorman's offer of an umbrella and heads out into the night.

The bars up this high are not options. Most will be packed with people from the fashion show. And if he somehow manages not to run into someone who knows him, he'll still be swarmed by paparazzi. On top of which he'd rather be read as young and gay somewhere it's going go be less of a liability. A few blocks down, a couple blocks over and he trots down the steps into a subway station. Union Square will do for starters; he'll probably end up in the West Village somewhere.

He's out on West 13th looking for a hole-in-the-wall place – a neighborhood joint that's busy but not packed - when out of pretty much nowhere the skies open up and it starts pouring. Loki sprints for the nearest restaurant awning and ducks underneath, raking back his wet mop and breathing heavily.

"May I get you a table?" The host is older. There's no flicker of recognition in his face. Loki wipes his eyes and looks inside. The little restaurant is nice and dark, with a long bar on one side and a tight mess of tables towards the rear. There are plenty of people inside, all sitting in groups chatting. Perfect. The food smells good, too... spicy, greasy. Heavenly.

"Sure," Loki says. The place is making him hungry. Leah would approve of him eating anyway. "No," he adds when the host inquires politely. "It’s just me. I'm not expecting anyone."

His small wooden table is half-hidden behind a column, which is all the better. And while there actually is the requisite battered TV over the bar, Loki quickly decides people-watching - courtesy of the long mirrors lining both walls of the candle-dotted dining room - is the more appealing option. He orders a bottle of prosecco and some fried zucchini chips and settles back against the low booth to enjoy what's left of his shitty, soggy evening.

"Mmm," he hums to himself. Not like anyone would hear him over the buzz of a couple dozen conversations anyway. The zucchini is just fabulous; it's bad for him in every conceivable way and it hits every spot he's _ever_ had. He may not have room for anything afterwards. Not that that’s a problem, anyway.

The dipping sauce is _fiery_. Delicious, yes, but hot to the point of pain. Loki flags down the waitress for a side of tzatziki - fuck tradition - and a refill on his prosecco... and then closes his eyes and thinks about what it might be like to literally melt into his surroundings.

~

"Sir?" The host catches Loki sucking spicy oiliness off his fingers, one after another. "I'm sorry to interrupt you. The man at the end of the bar would like to buy your wine."

Loki groans to himself. He sneaks a look in the mirror.

The guy is big and straw-haired, in a dark shirt and a low bun. He's looking down at the beer bottle between his hands. Back when Loki'd had a type, he would have fit it. Except that's all over now. Loki groans again, out loud this time.

"Tell him thank you, but I'm-," he starts.

"I'm sorry," the host says again, "but he insisted. Says he isn't going to bother you; he just wants to thank you. Apparently you remind him of someone. Someone he loves and misses dearly, he tells me. Someone who died."

Loki sighs. He's too worn out for this. "Sure," he says. He can't turn a story like that down. He does know a thing or two about what it's like to lose someone, after all. "Yeah. Okay. Tell him thank you for me."

~

The guy keeps his promise. He nods at the host but never turns to look into the dining room and doesn't try catching Loki's eye in the recursive funhouse chaos of the big mirrors. He just drinks his drink and minds his business.

Satisfied, Loki abandons his careful watch and turns his attention back to his meal.

Except the mood is- ruined. All he can think about is- is unrequited love and bitter abandonment. Of everything that had been lost to him long ago, before he'd dropped off the face of the earth. Before he'd been discovered - right here in New York, just a few blocks away - and reincarnated into modeling.

The whole rest of the bottle of prosecco only leaves him (drunk - after all these months on the tour, he's once again the kind of lightweight he normally mocks shamelessly - and) all the more maudlin. He knows it’s stupid, because everything is done and gone, but he’s fucking devastated all over again anyway.

~

"I should get going," Loki tells the host as clearly as he can manage. Standing without swaying is taking nearly all his attention. He fakes a smile and nods towards the empty seat. "Looks like the coast is clear now."

The host nods. "Indeed. Thor left at least half an hour ago now."

 _Thor_. No. It-it can’t be. "Wait," Loki huffs. He can't breathe, even. Not with all the air punched out of him. "What did you say?"

"Thor," the host repeats, peering at him intently. "Hey, are you okay? Do I need to get you a cab?"

"No, thank you. I’m fine,” Loki lies. “Have a nice night." He drops a fifty on the bar with shaking fingers and races out into the rain.

Of course there’s no one in sight. _Half an hour_. In a city this big, that’s an eternity. Somehow Loki even manages to round the corner and make it a halfway down the block… but he can’t make it any further. He drops heavily to his knees on the wet sidewalk and screams.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back in Norway, Loki hides from... everything.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

“I hate it here.” Loki looks around Oslo-Gardermoen airport’s baggage claim area, fighting the urge to rub his eyes. He’s still paying the price for a few hours (okay, who’s he kidding… it was a night, and then pretty much the entire following day) of weeping, and the last thing he needs to do is make things even worse for himself. He does have to work at least once in a while to eat, after all. And that means looking gorgeous, not like something the cat dragged in. Or left lying dead in in the road, even better.

Compared to Kennedy the terminal is clean and airy – not to mention blissfully quiet, especially this time of day – but he’s been in a seriously bad mood since at least 48 hours before leaving New York and he just can’t seem to shake it. Not that he’s even trying, really. “I hate my life,” he complains. Leah doesn’t need to look good for a living, she just needs to babysit him; consequently she’s yawning and rubbing _her_ eyes with enthusiasm. “Why can’t I just die already?”

Leah snorts. “Not that you’re melodramatic or anything.” She grabs him by the arm and lets the abrupt change in his momentum spin him around to face her. “What happened after I went to sleep- last night? The night before last? I’ve lost track. You’ve been weird ever since then. Weird for you, even.”

Loki test-drives several choice curses in his head before opting not to use any of them. The more obnoxious he is, the more it will draw her attention and the more she will pry into his private business. The business he doesn’t even understand himself and has no interest in sharing with anybody. Not even Leah. “Fine,” he grouses. “I love it here. Never been happier. Bursting with joy. There, is that better?”

“ _Loki_ ,” she admonishes. “Don’t you try-.”

“Lang,” he corrects her. “We’re back in town. Loki doesn’t exist anymore.”

She gives him a halfhearted dirty look. “You’re so bizarre. You do know that, right?”

He is. She’s right. Of course, that doesn’t in any way mean he wants to hear it. “Bite me,” he tells her instead, and then stalks away. Out of the corner of his eye he can still see her standing by the column, right where he left her. She looks a little hurt, actually, enough so that he feels – briefly – like an asshole.

Whatever. He’ll get over it.

They catch the train, pretty much effortlessly. Once again everything about the whole process is both cleaner and easier than anything could possibly have been in New York. Once again, he hates it. Even considering how long as he’s lived here, happily… right this second it doesn’t feel like home.

~

His apartment is neat and clean and- expensive. And that’s perfectly fine; modeling pays well when you’re someone of his caliber, even here. And there’s no one else in the agency whose skills – or looks – begin to rival his. That’s what lands him the international jobs. Something has to, after all, and it’s certainly not - as Leah takes great pains to remind him at every possibly opportunity - his charming personality.

It’s a nice, _nice_ loft, quiet and private. Furnished. With a gorgeous stone fireplace, a rooftop balcony, and a nearly new wood-and-granite kitchen.

And while it’s not particularly spacious, and he really needs the fireplace once the rainy gloom of winter hits, the whole place is bright and airy on sunny days and it's not like he needs the room anyway. Sure, when he'd first come back to Norway after years abroad this place, his first and only apartment here, had felt downright cramped by comparison. Now, he's used to it. Loki looks around. He runs his fingers along the long front edge of the stone mantel, enjoying the cool surface with its timeworn smoothness. 

There isn’t a hint of dust. Loki’s cleaning person is beyond fabulous. He tells Leah he keeps the woman on despite the not-inconsiderable expense because he travels so often; in reality, he simply likes the feeling of pretty much being able to snap his fingers and wave the room clean. Like magic. And it's not like he can't afford the luxury.

Speaking of magic, Loki sometimes wonders if he could work it himself, for real, if he only put his mind to it. "You were brought forth from a tree," he remembers his mother telling him. "It was the strangest thing your father had ever seen, to hear him tell it." But if he _does_ harbor the talent somewhere, it certainly hasn't manifested itself in his cleaning.

~

A good night's sleep would doubtless help (his mental and physical state) considerably, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. All told, Loki's jet-lagged and cranky. _Someone he loves and misses dearly_... he can't get the restaurateur’s words out of his head. Every time he tosses and turns, it's a struggle not to reach for his phone and Google. _Thor Odinson_ probably isn't that common a name, outside of this part of the world, at least... even in a huge city like New York there really can't be very many. And not knowing why Thor was in the Village - why he's in the City at all, or even in the country - is _killing_ Loki.

He doesn't need to know, he reminds himself. He doesn't need any more feelings or any more heartbreak. What he needs is to _sleep_ , by gods. Loki flips onto his side with a loud, exasperated huff and lies there, staring resolutely into nothingness with his back to his phone, until his alarm buzzes.

 _can i lie in bed_ , he texts Leah. _i didn't sleep for shit last night_.

 _no_ , she responds, almost immediately. _your next assignment is in three weeks and you need to get back on track pronto. don't make me come over there – i swear i’ll spank you_.

Loki drags himself out of bed, groaning loudly on behalf of- of no one. He snaps an awful selfie, all dark circles and horrible tangled bed-head and pink pillowcase creases along his jaw. _i'm up_ , he texts, and sends her the picture. He knows he can trust her over everyone never to leak it. _see?_

 _oh good grief_ , she sends back. _water. gym. now. you're wasting precious seconds. i'll send natasha... she'll get you sorted_.

 _don't you dare_ , he sends back. She's right, though. Natasha is just what he needs this morning. _you know i hate you_.

 _of course_ , Leah replies. _remember, i live for it_.

There's no point in showering before the gym. He’s just going to get gross anyway. Loki rakes his hair back into a crazy ponytail and resolutely doesn't think of dirty blond man-buns or broad, muscled shoulders. He washes his face carefully, brushes his teeth, rinses with hydrogen peroxide because his flawless white teeth are one of his best-selling assets, and carefully pats his face dry. He'd love to scrub at it today, to rub at his cheeks roughly until the skin tingles and stings. He doesn't. It's way up there on his list of things to do in retirement, though.

~

"You look like ass," Natasha greets him. "What did you do in New York? Party the nights away?"

"I went out one evening for dinner," he grumbles. "Just one, and alone." The last word catches uncomfortably in his throat. "It's just the flying, honest. And the not sleeping."

"Once," she scoffs. Her red curls bounce as she stretches. "Keg of ale, side of boar?"

He rolls his eyes. "Bottle of prosecco - _one_ \- and plate of French-Moroccan," he corrects. She doesn't need to know about the screaming, or the sobbing. She just doesn’t.

"Well, whatever you did, it kicked your ass," she says. "Tape up. Apparently we've got our work cut out for us this morning."

She has Loki work the speed bag first and then move up to light sparring. The two of them don't actually fight, because in his line of work he can't do real bruises; Natasha wears blockers in lieu of gloves and limits her own jabs to those of a verbal nature. In between sets she and Loki jump rope until they're soaked with sweat and he’s barely short of puking.

It's just what he needs. By the time they're done his arms and legs are shaking and he's far too whipped to think about _anything_.

~

July in New York had been nothing short of scorching. 35C easy, closer to 40C in the sun. And the buildings had held the heat like crazy, leaving even the evenings warm enough to be draining. By contrast, the weather back in Oslo is perfect. The locals are grousing about how warm it's been, of course, but to Loki the nice, cool evenings are pure heaven. He takes a long, refreshing nap on his rooftop patio, in the shade of the steep roofline that runs alongside it, and wakes up feeling much better. Except for how he aches pretty much everywhere. He hates Natasha, too.

In fact, most of the time he hates everybody.

~

A more practical person would probably take a quick look at the empty cupboards before immediately heading out for groceries. Loki can call in the morning and his shopper will be here tomorrow, though, so he figures he simply needn't bother. What's the point of working like a dog, after all, if you can't turn around and live like royalty? Instead he showers, dresses casually in a dark t-shirt and darker cargo pants, and heads out for a drive into the surrounding countryside. Tomorrow he needs to check back in at the agency, to talk through his experience over the past ten days and look at the proofs from Fashion Week. Today, though? Today, he's free.

~

"These are quite good," his agent tells him as Loki thumbs through sheet after sheet of plastic-sleeved proofs. Even here in the heart of the digital age, some things still work best on paper. "Not your absolute finest work, arguably, but still good. We've getting plenty of nice publicity."

"The designer is an asshole," Loki says flatly. "You're lucky I walked at all, the way he treated me."

"Grow up," she tells him, taking the proofs away from him and clipping them back into her binder. "You're not as hot as you think you are."

She's wrong about that, and they both know it. Loki opens his mouth to tell her so and then thinks the better of it. "Anything else you wanted to see me about," he asks, "or are we done here?"

She turns to her computer and brings up one of her email accounts. "You have fan mail," she says. "From some guy in New York who thinks _Lang_ looks an awful lot like an old friend of his. Someone he knew in Tonsberg as a child." Her eyes narrow. "Didn't you grow up in Vestfold somewhere? Before you moved abroad, I mean?"

The sudden pain in Loki's head is so sharp he can _taste_ it. "My parents were from Vestfold," he says, which is true, as far as it goes. "Maybe that's what you're thinking of. Me, I grew up in Paris."

She shrugs. "Okay, then. Do you want me to forward it to you anyway," she offers. "He doesn't sound like too much of a creeper."

Loki swallows and counts to twenty, willing his voice to come out bored-sounding and dull. "Nah," he says. He needs to get out of here, now. "Just thank him for his interest and forget it ever happened."

"Will do," she says briskly after a beat or two too long. "Um, Loki?"

He cringes, already halfway to standing. "Mm?"

"Never mind," she says. "Go home and get some rest. I'll pull together the profile on your next assignment tomorrow. Stop by for it Friday, okay?"

"Sure," he says, turning quickly away before he loses control of his expression. "See you Friday."

He's out the door and flying down the stairs two at a time, long before she has a chance to respond.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things that go way back can still take forever to lose their sting.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

“Who’s that?” Loki reaches out with a sock-clad toe and kicks Leah’s foot off the opposite knee. She lurches forward, nearly losing her grip on her cell phone.

“Stop it,” she mouths. She glares at him as he laughs. “And be quiet. Yeah,” she says into her phone. “Sorry. I’m listening. Um, sure, I can ask him. It does seem like a pretty big coincidence, I know.” She snickers. “Right, right. He can be pretty difficult sometimes. Hey, kiddo, you have a good one.”

Leah stands and shoves her phone into the pocket of her shorts. “That was Darcy. She says you have a not-so-secret admirer.”

Loki frowns. “I told her to let it go with that guy,” he grouses. “Good to see she listened.”

“No, she did,” Leah corrects. “She specifically said you’d told her to blow him off, and that’s exactly what she did.” She grins in a way that leaves him edgy. “But apparently he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Keeps asking if she’s sure you’re not related to _Loki Laufeyson_ , and then sending pictures to prove it.”

“What?” He accidentally sucks in a little saliva and chokes on it. “Pictures,” he squawks. Because it’s not possible. It had been so long ago. They weren’t even more than kids. “What are you talking about?”

“Down, boy.” Leah laughs. “He sent pictures of _little Loki_ , apparently. Darcy figures they’re probably from when you- the guy he lost, I mean, were thirteen. Maybe fourteen or so. Something about a boat and a lake house, and lots of pretty scenery. Kind of like you might expect to find here, in Norway. Don’t screw with me, Loki. You know this guy, don’t you?”

He sighs, heavily. The last thing he needs is the two of them, Leah and Darcy, ganging up on him and making a big deal out of something that- that died long, long ago. If it really ever lived at all, for that matter. “I know a lot of people,” he hedges. “Despite what you might think I actually had a childhood. Friends, school, the whole shebang.”

“No way,” she teases. “You? You came from outer space. In a pod or something. I’m sure of it. You grew behind someone’s garage, in a garden, at night.”

“I’ll give you _a pod or something_.” Loki elbows her, trying his best to keep things playful. Even though inside his own head he’s screaming. Panicked. He’s built a whole new life for himself here, one that gets him by. But it’s fragile; it won’t to take very much to start the whole thing falling down like a house of cards around him. “Honestly, Leah,” he insists. “I don’t know this guy. I don’t. And you know it’s never all that hard to get your hands on a celebrity’s baby pictures.”

“Celebrity,” she says. “You? Puhleeze.”

“Well, I am.” He strikes a pose, smirking. “I’m a supermodel.”

“Beg pardon, what was that? You’re an asshole? For sure. Totally.”

“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” he tells her. Which is one of those things she says about him – and to him – all the time. He can’t keep having this conversation. Not today. Right now he needs to get outside, alone, and find himself some space to breathe before he loses it. Completely. “Look,” he tells Leah, probably a little too quickly. “I’d love to stay and talk. You know I live for this sort of witty banter, don’t you? But I have a client meeting in three days and I need to get my workouts in early.”

“Right,” she says, like she knows he’s lying. Which she does; he’s sure of it.

~

A few days later, after another chat with Darcy, Leah tries again. "You do know him, don't you?” She shakes her head in exasperation. "I should have realized, as soon as you were so dead set against any of us contacting him. He's not just some stranger you saw in New York."

"Darcy's nosy," he says instead of answering. Leah glares at him. "Fine," he snaps. "No, I don't know him. He's just some stalker."

Leah scoops up her bag and stands. "Alrighty then. Call me when you feel like- like not lying." This time, the door slams behind her.

~~o~~  
Tonsberg, Norway  
Fourteen years ago  
~~o~~

_"You have to tell me what's wrong." Thor hugs Loki tightly; Loki sobs brokenly into his shoulder. "You have to! If I don't know what's wrong, how can I fix it?"_

_Stupid Thor, thinking everything's fixable. Loki, on the other hand, knows better. He's always known better, but it's been all that much more obvious since his mom died. Since his father started trying to fix everything with bottles of akvavit - for its medicinal properties, of course - and ended up spending day after week after month staring solemnly out at the bleak winter landscape._

_"This really isn't something you can fix with your idiotic smiles and your ridiculous wishes," Loki says into Thor's collarbone. They're almost of a height, now that Loki has finally hit what he hopes will be the first of many growth spurts._

_Still, Thor likes to have Loki cuddle against him. Mostly unconsciously, Loki accommodates it. Even though it grates, letting Thor act like parent to baby. "Were you even listening to me? My Father." Loki smacks the flat heel side of a fist against Thor's chest, again and again. "Is sending. Me to boarding. School in Paris. As in France. As in: Not. Near. Here. Forever. And you're going to waltz in and make that fine how, exactly?"_

_Thor nuzzles Loki's hair and kisses a path from temple to cheekbone to nose, slow and light and careful. Loki's in fighting form, but for once Thor doesn't seem tempted to rise to it. "I'll come to Paris too," he says, like it's just that simple. "To your new school. It's not like my parents can't afford it." Odin jokes regularly about being king. It's just a joke, sure, but Loki knows Thor's right; the Borsons are loaded._

_And they act like Loki's the fox in the henhouse. So fat lot of good that money’s going to do anybody. He wipes his nose on Thor's shirt. "It won't happen," he says flatly. "Your parents hate me."_

_"They do not," Thor insists. "My mom thinks you're amazing."_

_Loki laughs. His nose is still running and he can barely see; something about that is bound to be funny. "Right," he says. "Sure. But your dad hates me."_

_"No, he doesn't," Thor explains. Again. They've been having this same discussion all afternoon. "He just worries. He thinks we're too young to be so serious. But he's wrong."_

_"No, you're wrong," Loki points out, nastily. "He hates it that we're fucking."_

_"Loki!" Thor sighs; Loki's tear-dampened hair ruffles. "Why do you have to talk about it that way?"_

_Loki pushes back, struggling as Thor catches his upper arms and holds on. "Let go of me," he demands. "Just because you don't want to face what we are, I-."_

_"Shh." Thor kisses him, not stopping even when Loki bites. "That's not true and you know it. It'll be fine. I'll convince them. You'll see."_

~~o~~  
Paris, France  
Fourteen years ago  
~~o~~

_Loki knows he shouldn't be surprised. He isn't, not really. As much as Thor may think otherwise, Loki's the smooth talker of the two of them. Which is why he's hiding in a closet at his new home (a renowned - but still horrifying, maybe even more so as a result of being so important - international boarding school for college-bound young men and women a few kilometers west of Paris) while Thor is still languishing in Tonsberg. If Loki gets caught calling and talking with Thor on the premises, the school officials will take away his cell phone. "Next semester, maybe," Thor goes on - and what with the maybe, Loki's not foolish enough to pretend it's a promise - "As long as I can talk my parents into it. Mom thinks it's a great idea. International business, good colleges, a chance at a big career somewhere awesome. It's just that my dad-."_

_"Doesn't like it that we're fucking," Loki says, yet again. Were fucking, really; it's been a month since he'd left town already. But that doesn't change the point. "Just like I told you."_

_"No," Thor argues. "It isn't that. He just doesn't like the idea of me leaving the country. He wants me to stick around and take over the family business after I’m through with school and he's afraid I'll leave instead and run off to America. But I'm pretty sure I can get him to come around by January."_

_Right. Loki groans. Even if it does work out, January might as well be sometime in the next century. "By January you'll have forgotten all about me."_

_"That's ridiculous," Thor exclaims. "It's already October, Loki."_

_~_

_Of course, January comes and goes and the two of them are still in different countries. It stings. Loki gamely pretends it doesn't, yes, but it really, really does anyway._

_~_

_Over the first few months he and Thor talk whenever they can. It's not as often as Loki'd like, but his roommate is almost always around after classes and even out on the grounds it's difficult to find anywhere that’s really private. If things seem a little strained, which they often do, Loki tries his absolute hardest to write all of it off on his own imagination. He's not someone who makes friends quickly - not that he'd want to, not with these rich assholes - and it's all too easy to start feeling more and more like no one likes him. Which they don't, and they're quick to make sure he's aware of it._

_It’s not surprising, consequently, that he’s projecting his feelings of- hurt and rejection onto his situation with Thor._

_Of course that has to be the problem. It has to._

_~_

_By late April, though, something is clearly wrong… so much so that it’s become impossible to ignore._

_"I'll be home in five weeks," Loki tells Thor. He’s positively giddy. There's no way he can hide his excitement; he can hardly wait, after all, and it's bound to show. Despite the lovely surroundings he's utterly sick of this stupid place. He's done with the noise and the constant flow of people, with being teased for his accent, with enduring the endless whispered comments - "faggot," "cocksucker," "is that a guy or a girl?" - that dog him everywhere. Loki can't wait to come home to Norway. To peace and quiet. To Thor._

_"Huh," Thor says. "Really? I thought you had to stay all year."_

_It’s just a few simple words. To Loki it feels like he’s been slapped, though. His heart sinks a little more with each syllable. "I thought you'd be pleased," he says quietly._

_"What? Oh. I am," Thor says. "Really. It'll be nice to see you."_

_"Thor," Loki asks. He can't quite hide the quaver in his voice and that pisses him off. Badly. But not badly enough to override the fear. "What's going on?"_

_"Nothing," Thor says, too quickly. "I'm just busy. That's all."_

_~_

_"Thor's phone, not Thor speaking. Stop! Give that to me. Sorry, sorry. Thor! Let go!" It takes Loki several words to place the voice, especially since she's practically shrieking. Oh. Right. It’s Sif. Sif who never had time for boys before. Loki abruptly ends the call._

_His phone rings about two minutes later. Thor. Two minutes too late, at least to have any hope of salvaging anything. Loki shoves the thing under his pillow and lets Thor’s call go to voicemail. It doesn’t ring again._

_He's still on his back on his bed hours later, heart pounding like crazy and hot tears dribbling past his temples into his ears, when his roommate comes back from classes._

_"You okay?" Sam is American, sent here by his career military father. He's going to West Point next. It isn’t like it sounds… all things considered he's not a bad person. He might even understand, and either way he never teases._

_"My stomach is killing me," Loki lies. Or not, because it is killing him._

_"Anything I can do?" Sam leans over him, brow furrowed. "You look like shit, man."_

_Loki shakes his head. "Just stay back. I promise; you don't want to catch this."_

_Sam laughs and takes a couple of steps back. “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t puke in here, okay?”_

_“Yeah,” Loki says softly. “I’ll try really hard not to.”_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
> 
> **WARNING: mild self-injury; brief mention of suicidal ideation**

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Normally Leah comes around to Loki’s way of thinking pretty quickly. While she does only put up with so much of his shit without complaining, she also understands one of Loki's immutable truths: as much as he may want to back down, he often just can't. Even when he really, really wants to… which he sometimes doesn’t. And thanks to that waiting for him to make the first move means one of two things... holding out for a meltdown or, if deep down he's angry rather than anxious, losing him forever. Consequently he's a little surprised when another week comes and goes with nothing whatsoever from her, excepting a calendar invite reminding him to show up for an upcoming client session.

Loki debates ignoring the invite and skipping the shoot, just to spite her (and Darcy, and anyone else who might be way too far up in his business these days). In the end he opts not to, because a guy does have to eat and even a good agency can only tolerate so much bad behavior - supermodel or no - before people run completely out of patience.

On top of which the client does lovely work and the photographer is one of Loki's favorites. It's not often he comes across menswear that leaves him looking ethereal without stripping him of his gender, but this particular designer works magic. The fabrics are lush, with just the right amount of fluidity, and the colors - deep neutral greys, subtle blues and purples - aren't anything most people put him in. _It's a shame_ , he thinks, as the stylist plays with his artfully tangled mop between shots, because dressed like this he really does look like an angel. An angel with eyes so green they're not even human.

Loki narrows said eyes to hooded slits and hisses at himself in the mirror.

The stylist laughs. "We could put a pair of ears on you," he teases, mocking cat ears up with his fingers, "and a nice long tail. Black, of course, like your hair," he adds, fluffing another section with the narrower comb and spraying it into submission. "Tasteful, not kinky." He smiles at Loki in the mirror. "You'd be the god of the Internet in a heartbeat."

"Don't even," Loki threatens, but he can't help smiling in return. He's lonely, loathe as he may be to admit it, and even this little scrap of friendly interaction is- better than nothing.

"I wouldn't dare." The stylist winks and Loki outright grins at him.

~

It's a long shoot and Loki's tired and a little sore by the end of it. His back has been acting up lately; he makes a mental note to ask Natasha to refer him to someone who can fix it. Of course, her idea of _fixing_ will probably be a huge bear of a Russian man who walks on his spine or something.

He pictures it in his head.

The man is bearded, huge,- and golden. The thought makes him cry.

_yeah_ , Loki gives in and texts Leah. _you're right. i know him_.

Even though it's not at all unusual during the agency's usual happy hour timeframe, he's a little - a lot - hurt when she doesn't reply.

~~o~~  
Paris, France  
14 years ago  
~~o~~

_Loki doesn't sleep a wink. He's alternately heartbroken and furious, back and forth like an ultra-fast pendulum. By morning, he’s done: he settles on hard-hearted and determined. And exhausted, but he's young. He can take it. And all that lost sleep is worth it, because he has a plan._

_Money makes up for the fact that he hasn't won himself a whole lot of favors. He pulls most of what he’s kept in his account and squirrels it away carefully, because - while he won't be needing it here much longer - he's going to want it sometime soon. By which point it won't be accessible, not if he leaves it with the bank._

_At a big international school it isn't hard to find people who know people. People who have people. "Going to the States this summer and I can't exactly let the drinking age stop me" sometimes works; when it doesn't, given his reputation, talk of underage clubbing invariably does. He has to kiss a few people he'd really rather not, and endure a thoroughly skeevy groping in a filthy Metro station toilet stall, but in the end he has a very adequate new passport (and a few random documents to back it up if questioned)._

_~_

_He skips the day’s classes. There's a lot to do before nightfall. He’d gotten the undercut yesterday - just the back, ear-to-ear, where his shoulder-length curly mess easily hides it - and bought the clothes, but he has to pack his little bag without being obvious. And set the stage. And write the letters._

_"Sorry," he types in his note to Sam. Because his roommate truly seems like a decent guy, and is in no way part of this. "It wasn't you. Best wishes." It's trite and stupid and he doesn't let himself dwell on Sam further because he can't risk weakening his resolve. Not at this point. Things are too far gone already._

_After that things go quickly. Taken collectively everyone else is- easier. Loki’s angry. At his family for dumping him here. At his fellow students for treating him like garbage. At the creepy man who'd fondled him in exchange for the name of the passport forger. Most of all, at Thor, for tossing him away like so much garbage. For running roughshod over his aching little heart. For plain old fucking existing. "I just couldn't," he writes. His own handwriting this time, to narrow down the theories. Rich green-black ink, his favorite. This pen, he actually will miss. "Thanks for nothing." Finally he cuts his finger with the razor, his eyes wet with tears - anger, loss, betrayal, and the sharp, bright shock of pain - and waits until the blood is running down his wrist to smear a red-brown handprint on the paper._

_~_

_He leaves the grounds on the early bus in the afternoon, with a bandage on his finger and the satchel he'd bought yesterday hidden inside his book bag. "Library," he'd signed himself out, and it actually is his first destination. Loki has a lot of time to kill before the streets are empty enough for his broader purpose, but he needs to be off school property with a viable excuse and "going drinking" isn't one. Not midweek, certainly. And Sam has track right up until dinner, so there isn't much risk of premature discovery or blown whistles and other major interruptions._

_Behind the library he exchanges his school uniform for tight black jeans hidden under a flowing skirt, a soft t-shirt, and a genderless jacket. Just in case anyone sees him walking near what will be the scene. He shoves his hair up under a faded black and green striped beret, tosses on some big sunglasses, and packs everything else neatly back into the satchel. Even the book bag, and his manly shoes._

_~_

_Three Metro rides, some lovely bread and cheese (and wine, because he can), and a long walk later. Loki stands very, very still at the precise center of the Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor. It's a little before midnight, and drizzling. He’s shivering, with the damp and (mostly) with nerves. But he’s timed it perfectly; as far as he can tell, both on this bridge and on the ones he can see off to either side, no one else is around._

_Loki takes a couple of deep breaths and tries not to look up or down. Now that he's here, turning tale into reality is more tempting than he’d anticipated. But if he does end it all for real, Thor kind of wins. And besides, right up until yesterday Loki hadn’t been entertaining thoughts of dying. "No," he reminds himself sharply. "Just don’t. You deserve better.”_

_It's right on the far side of unpleasantly chilly. He shudders. This close the Seine smells- awfully dirty. Fishy. Far below his feet the water looks oily in the dark. This close the idea of drowning in it isn’t the least bit romantic or pleasant. Not from right here, a few meters above the surface. He shakes his head to clear his thoughts. This isn’t all or nothing. It’s not like he can’t end it all some other time, if he changes his mind._

_Right now he needs to get out of here before someone spots him. Loki makes a neat pile - book bag (with note, books, blood, razor protected from the wet inside), shoes, school clothes. Underwear. Socks. Another deep breath and a quick back-and forth look; the coast is still clear. He squats down to carefully slide everything under the lower rail, squishing the pile down to fit underneath, and then pushes it out onto the narrow section of decking beyond. Once his stuff is in position he hauls himself back up to standing. He wants to be sure to leave a few handprints on the railing, just in case that somehow matters despite the rain. Because no one, even someone as tall as he is, could climb over that thing no-handed. Once everything is in place, he hurries back down into the rainy Paris night._

_The first thing Loki does is ditch the skirt and jacket, even though losing the latter means he’s that much less warm. He loves the beret, though, and can’t bear to part with it; he rolls it into a wet little ball and tucks it into his satchel, after making a mental note to stretch the fabric back out when he gets- wherever he ends up going. He tugs his rain-frizzed hair into a sloppy mash-up that’s half-pony, half-bun and hurries to catch the Metro to Charles de Gaulle_.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting a start in life, and then modeling...

~~o~~  
New York City, USA  
13 years ago  
~~o~~

_Loki likes New York, well enough at least. The city is still recovering from 11 September, 2001 – he still hasn’t gotten used to the American date, even after a year here - but its atmosphere of willful determination laced with bone-deep sadness suits him. And the resulting influx of construction that started out small but has built to a veritable surge recently has brought a seeming endless stream of skilled tradesmen - steel workers, masons, welders, electricians... even drywall hangers and finish carpenters… into the city. Big, strong, muscled men, many of them only a few years older than Loki is. The majority of them hail from what he’s heard is his adoptive country's huge, largely rural midsection, where he gathers things are rather less- permissive. Not nearly out enough to work the bar circuit and far too vanilla for the masked-and-nameless clubs in Chelsea, they still prove not to be too straight to be drawn in by Loki in leather. In short skirts and corsets._

_In thigh-high fishnets and spiky heels and- and nothing._

_They adore his androgynous looks and his smart mouth and his devastatingly sexy accent; Loki, by turns, is hopelessly in love with the hot meals, single rooms, and private en suites his shitty hostel doesn't offer._

_Most of the tradesmen also indulge him (and themselves) by buying the booze that helps to take the edge off. Alcohol is something he'd long since been beyond annoyed to discover even the three years his false- his new identity - Hans "Luke" Larsson – had gained him isn't enough to make him legal. Not here. He's legal to fuck, but not to drink, and if that's not ridiculous he doesn't know what is._

_It's not all that a bad life, really. Most of the men are ridiculously sweet, and as long as he keeps them too busy to talk he can easily pretend they're- other people. One other person, yes. Someone he'll hate forever._

_Even if he has a funny way of showing it._

_~_

_Loki’d spent the first few months here studying up for the GED – not to take the exam, just to learn; even though his falsified papers put him here in the States on a student visa, and he's (on paper) college-aged, the hard, cold truth is that he hadn't finished his schooling and there's only so much he can fake until he makes it - and taking his first few really basic college classes._

_His English is good, despite his strong accent. Loki'd quickly discovered he had a real edge there, compared to most of the other foreign nationals in the hostel. And he's a good kind of foreign, a safe kind, which matters right now in this battered, angry place. So he's been doing favors of the nice sort (help with job applications and paperwork, errand-running, tutoring) during the day - for money - and favors of the naughty variety (for free, where free means ending the evening fed and bathed and pleasantly hazy) at night._

_It's not an unacceptable arrangement. And it both pays his bills and keeps his expenses reasonable._

_~_

_He passes his first semester's classes, and then his second, with better grades than he has any right to expect. And every time a construction worker gets annoyingly attached, the guy's stint is up and "but I have to continue towards my diploma or I'll be deported!" gets him out of relocating. Because Loki knows none of them are really brave enough to take their newfound fetishes back to their straight-laced hometowns._

_And none of them are really Thor anyway. Not that he would love them if they were. He’s done with that. He isn’t loving anybody._

_Plus, Loki is not the kind of person who has any intention of settling down and giving in to boring domesticity. Not now, not ever. He's going places._

_Where, he has no idea. Places, anyway._

_~_

_Ironically, he's hot off the most recent installment in a series of one-night stands - window-shopping on Fifth Avenue sporting a trendy coffee to knock back his headache and big dark sunglasses to hide the night's (the week's?) sins - when the sharply-dressed man approaches him._

_The guy has a solid, businesslike handshake and his eyes sweep over Loki intently with- with something that's an entirely different kind of hunger. Impersonal. Appraising. Like Loki's a sports car or prize horse he's contemplating buying. "Do you model," he asks, and Loki's abruptly self-conscious about the necklace of bruises and the messy, tangled updo. "Because if you don't you should. You certainly have the look for it."_

_"Seriously?" Loki isn't in the right headspace for this today. Not without another several hours' sleep, anyway, and maybe a drink or five. "Does that line actually work for you?"_

_The man smirks, but his eyes are still coolly assessing. "Think about it," he says, extending a business card held neatly between two manicured fingers. He doesn't try to touch Loki, and he releases the card at once without any teasing or games. "Because we'd love to test you in front of the camera. Give us a call if you decide you're interested. No promises," he adds as he turns to go, "but I always do have a good eye. I really think we can make you famous."_

_Loki- can't even. He doesn’t even manage to say goodbye._

_Only once the man has disappeared back into the crowd does Loki come unstuck. He stuffs the card into his pocket and tries to go on about his awful, hung-over morning._

_~_

_The agency is a big name, one even Loki's heard of. He does a little more scouting. The address on the card is real. The phone number is legitimate. He takes to studying print ads everywhere he goes - the subway, block after block of plywood-enclosed construction zones, stores, magazine stands - and comes to the conclusion that the guy just might have a valid point. Looks- not like his, but striving to be, are just coming into their own in the market. And giving this a try may cut into his hobbies, but-... to be (anonymously) in the spotlight? He can't deny the way that calls to him._

_~_

_The reception area is stark and minimalist. Clean. Classy. Expensive. Loki is clean, too, with artfully day-old hair and a simple outfit. He's even five days sober and as many nights well rested._

_He’s also very, very fucking nervous._

_There isn’t any reason to be; the camera, it turns out, worships him._

_Modeling is hard work, and a lot of the people he deals with aren't pleasant. That gets both better and worse over time, though, as he lands more and bigger shoots and starts working with a coach to prepare for live shows. "Oh, my," his coach tells him, patting Loki's hip affectionately, "don't you have just the strut for runway. And the legs. Those shoes. Do it again for me, darling. Yes, yes. Now turn. Just like that. Perfect." The man blows him a kiss. “You’re it, darling. Simply amazing.”_

_Loki's used to being so much meat. It's not a huge stretch adjusting to being so much candy._

_~_

_The work pours in. Loki hasn't been out in months, hasn't been kissed on the mouth or held or petted. But he's still keeping up his coursework - the agency has worked magic in getting him a proper work visa, but he really does want something to fall back on in case- well, shit does happen - and he's really too tired to miss it. That, and starting to see his own brooding, kohl-rimmed eyes looking back at him from the same sorts of ads he'd first coveted is- all kinds of addicting._

_On top of which (he doesn't give half a fuck about his family, of course, but) he can't help but wonder if his print work is reeling in Thor._

_~_

_His early jobs are all waxed skin and carefully messed makeup and "tuck your junk, darling... no one wants to see it." Loki doesn’t argue. He’s grown tall and willowy, with long black hair and hollow cheeks and sharply feline features, and half his allure is probably the mystery. Is he? Is she? And he does what it takes to keep the audience guessing._

_As he builds a following, though, some of the trendier men's houses begin to show interest. That’s a good thing - Loki knows it's going to be harder and harder to keep up his girly look as he starts to approach the age he once pretended to be, meaning modeling as a man gives him a future - and he takes all the work he can handle._

_Loki keeps on with his coach. Studies Pilates. Earns some exclusive contracts. Starts to save money. He ultimately moves out of the hostel and settles into a tiny apartment - by comparison, it's a fucking palace - with two girls from the agency who're into other girls and don't pressure him for anything._

_Things are better. Things are good. And he actually enjoys the work. But when he's tired - which is all the time, really - Loki almost misses Norway_.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> History lessons...

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Leah sets the steaming paper cup with its insulated cozy next to his wrist, close enough that he can feel the heat of it. "Coffee?"

"Don't think this means we're still friends," Loki grumbles, not looking up from his glossy trade rag. "Not after I needed you last night and you didn't even have the decency to answer me."

"Lo- Lang, Lang," Leah corrects herself. She sighs, the big, dramatic kind even he could be proud of. "It’s not like that. First off, you were answering a question of mine. Have you _ever_ thought of someone besides yourself in an emergency?"

He's sure he has. He must have. But Leah will press for examples and he hasn't got one. Loki opts for ignoring her like she isn't there. He turns one page and then another, listening to the quiet whoosh and smoothing the paper down like he's utterly alone here. The article is from one of his shoots; he’s allowed.

"Second," Leah goes on, "in all the time we've worked together, have you _ever_ failed to make it clear - to me, to everyone - that you were _having_ an emergency?"

Oh, probably not. But that isn't the point. He goes right on examining the flawless, nearly life-sized photograph of his own equally perfect face.

"So," Leah says a little too cheerfully, like she’s confident from his non-reaction that she's won. Which she is, for sure, and she has. She flops down in the chair next to his and unwinds her scarf like nothing’s amiss. "You know the guy. I smell a story." She digs her own coffee out of the bag, with some fresh fruit and a little tub of Nutella.

Which he isn't eating, because he has a shoot tomorrow and - as Darcy and Natasha had both seen fit to remind him earlier this week - he's getting to that age where he simply can't be too careful. "You've been lucky so far," Natasha had told him sternly during the kind of strenuous workout that always leaves him nauseated and shaking. "But I'm not sure you have the face for character work. Once your porcelain doll days are over, you'll need some new options. And don't look at me like that," she's added as he'd glared at her, rivulets of sweat streaming down his neck and chest. "If you were a woman, you'd have been all washed up years ago."

She isn't wrong; he does know it. Loki's even taken - secretly, because if the piranhas sense blood in the water they'll fucking shred him - to nosing through college websites in search of the least painful way to finish out his long-since-abandoned degree program.

One of those ridiculous free online _find your dream job_ quizzes had offered three options: model, diva, and royalty. Loki hadn't found it the least bit funny.

"You didn't hear a thing I just said, did you?" It's the fondness in her voice that stops him, not the exasperation. Loki is never quite sure how to react to _fond_.

"Mm," he hums. "Did you need something?"

Leah snorts. "So you know the guy," she repeats. Loki's stomach does a somersault. He's suddenly glad he'd skipped the Nutella. "I sense a story." She waits, smiling, until he turns back to the magazine. "Oh no no," she admonishes, giving his arm a nudge. "I know there's got to be a story. This is your life, after all. So? Do tell."

"And what if I don't want to?" There's no point in arguing; she'll see right through a lie at this point.

She grins. "If you didn't want to, you wouldn't have texted me. Right? I'm all ears here. Go ahead. Tell me."

He can share part of it – enough to shut her up, hopefully - without going off the deep end. Probably. "I was with someone a long time ago. Before modeling. Before New York. Even before Paris." It's a struggle not to picture Thor's face, not to remember the touch of those big- _no_. "It went bad, I guess you could say."

"And you handled the whole situation with maturity and aplomb, of course," Leah teases. "Didn't burn a single bridge in the process, did you?"

Really, people as a whole aren't as funny as they think they are. Loki rolls his eyes. "I was a teenager," he says. "I- um," he stalls; he's never told anyone this, not even his mindless construction fucks or the other expats at the hostel. "I faked my own suicide and left the country."

"Ooh," Leah exclaims. "Very subtle. Let me guess... you did it in Paris, to make a grand statement about beauty and love."

He shrugs. It was a long time ago, nearly half his lifetime. "Maybe. Kind of."

"And then what happened?"

This is the part of the overgrown, fallow mental pasture he still can't disturb without seriously hurting. "Nothing," he admits. Leah's expression shifts to something soft. Pitying. He has to fight not to slap her. Not to jump up and stomp away. "Nothing at all. Not even when I was discovered" - it sounds better that way, and it's factually accurate as far as that goes - "and my face was absolutely everywhere. Yes, I don't exactly come from a booming cosmopolis, but someone looking for me wouldn't have had any trouble. He just- he didn't. He let me fall off the end of the earth."

Leah rests her chin on her cupped palm. Loki can't do that; one of his first makeup artists had warned him years ago that doing so would lead to a double chin and awful wrinkles. He knows it's a lie now but hasn’t succeeded in shaking off the clutching, bony hands of superstition. "What if he actually believed you were dead? Wouldn't that maybe explain it?"

It maybe would, yes. "Who would actually think that," Loki scoffs instead. "The whole thing was amateurish and sloppy as hell. I'm still surprised it even got me out of the country and into the States of all places. During the rise of Homeland Security, even."

"Did it seem believable to you at the time? When you were still mostly a kid and everything?" Leah dips into the Nutella without using fruit and then licks her fingers. He glares at her; she smirks back, defiant. "What? It's not like _you're_ having any."

"I suppose," Loki says. He's not quite sure what he's answering.

"And he was your age, this callous oaf of yours?"

She's trying to coax a smile out of him. It almost works. "Yeah. He was maybe a year older." Loki actually knows the exact difference in their ages, in minutes, but there's no way he's admitting that. "Why?"

Leah shrugs. Her finger snakes back into the little tub of chocolaty paradise. "What if he really, really believed you?"

Annoyingly, that's exactly the conclusion recent events have drawn him to. And Loki hates being wrong... hates having the house of cards of his bitter wrath knocked down around him. "What idiot would do that," he grumbles, flipping the page again. He's abruptly tired of staring at his own reflection.

"Hm," Leah mock-considers, drumming her - sticky; gross! - fingers on the table. "How about... someone who loves you?"

~

Ignoring her doesn't help. It never does. She's pretty much guaranteed not to go away, no matter how many times he orders her to.

~

By the time the conversation is finally over - at the point where the tears streaking his cheeks are too frequent to ignore, because business is business and they both know he can't really quite rock the puffy-eyed junkie look anymore - he's told Leah way, way too much about how a guy with the same name as his long-reviled adolescent ex had sent wine to his table that night in New York City. How that same person had explained to the house staff that the dark, mysterious, rain-mussed stranger in the mirror had reminded him of his long-lost, dead- well, Thor hadn't said lover, and neither had Loki. Still, neither Loki nor Leah is stupid.

And how, now, this new Thor has put two and two together and gotten- well, not quite four, not yet. But Thor is easily at three and a half and gaining. "He's caught the resemblance," Loki’d admitted.

“Yes,” Leah’d agreed. "He seems to think that Lang and his long lost whatever might somehow be related."

Loki’s barely just managed not to spill the whole thing about the hostel and his hobbies when Leah gives him a wry little smile and passes him a napkin. "Your eyes," she says kindly. "They're leaking. Anyway, he's hot at least. This guy, I mean. Oh, don't look so horrified," she tells him. "Darcy and I did some homework. I mean, we had to make sure he wasn't some lonely felon."

Loki groans. He knows the office staff handles that sort of thing routinely... the fans that have pasts, or that get too personal, too close, or too unbalanced. Of course they would check into this one, especially after Loki's own initial denial.

"Riiiiight," he drawls anyway. But then his curiosity gets the better of him. "He lives in the States, then, my stalker?"

"Actually, no," Leah says. She suddenly looks the smallest bit nervous. "He's in woolens. Family business. What with the first Men's Fashion Week and all, he was probably there for business. Just like you were."

"And," Loki simply can't resist prompting her, "where does he live exactly?"

She sets her cup down and sits up ramrod straight. "Are you sure you want to know?"

Loki swallows. He does but he doesn't but he does. "Yes," he chokes out, thumping his own chest and glaring at his (innocent, framed) coffee. "I am. I do."

"Tonsberg," she says softly. "As in: right here in Norway."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Modeling has its ups and downs.

~~o~~  
Stockholm, Sweden  
Present day  
~~o~~

"Just stop," Darcy tells him. She sounds exasperated. Actually exasperated, not the half-amused kind. Which is why Leah normally comes with him, and not someone from the front office. Except Leah is on her phone out in the hallway, and the only one here to deal with his crap is Darcy. If he keeps this tantrum up, he knows, she'll make him suffer for it later. "This is Stockholm, not some Norwegian backwater. You should be flattered. They could have booked anyone here. Now try acting like a grownup, why don’t you?"

She's right, of course, not that it makes him feel any better. Loki is having one of those days where he feels decidedly over-the-hill, and nothing about this job is helping in the slightest.

It's a partner shoot, which by definition means it’s not one of his favorites. The girl he's working with - and she really is hardly more than a girl, to the point where the whole thing feels borderline creepy in a rather teacher/schoolgirl way that Loki doesn't find remotely appealing - is a well-known actress, not a model. She's confident and relaxed in front of the camera, but she's used to having a wider array of tools at her disposal when it comes to conveying emotion. To her credit she's not at all a diva about anything; she cheerfully tolerates being snapped at and reposed and corrected, over and over. But it's making for a very long working session and Loki's patience is really flagging.

Even better, they're modeling high-end lingerie - women's and men's, no cross-dressing - and the client has asked the photographer to go for a mild, tasteful BDSM vibe suitable for a mainstream United States print ad campaign. Which is to say, prissy. The concept itself is fine with Loki. He doesn't mind being nearly nude in some shots and completely so (with certain portions of his anatomy carefully hidden, of course) in others. He's fine with the heavy, black leather collar, and equally comfortable with the expensive-looking black crops and floggers his partner is supposed to be resting (gently) against his back and shoulders. But none of it is helping with the creepy vibe, not even a little.

His novice of a coworker, on the other hand, claims to be having a hard time getting into and staying in character… whatever that means. To Loki, she’s just being- silly. He hates silly. She doesn't want to touch him, and can't seem to keep from erupting into nervous giggles whenever they're asked to make eye contact (or even simply face one another). And any tiny shards of chemistry they might have been able to scrape together initially had vanished in an instant when, after snickering in the middle of a meant-to-be-dark-and-brooding shot yet again, she had leaned in close and whispered "I'm so sorry! Honest. It's just... you remind me of my father."

"I need a minute," Loki had huffed, standing abruptly. And then he'd marched off the set without waiting for permission.

"You need to get back out there," Darcy warns him. "Now. You're a professional. Act like one."

Loki takes a few deep breaths to try and focus. He isn’t free to do any of the things his body wants; he can’t pace and can't claw his fingers through his hair, not in the middle of a session. In the end he doesn't apologize - he has every right to be pissed this time! - but he does walk back out to the set as ordered. "My thigh cramped," he lies when the girl's minder asks if everything is okay. Everyone looks sadly sympathetic as he makes a big show of rubbing at it. These people. So concerned about his fucking wellbeing. "It’s nothing. I’m fine. Let's just get this done."

After a few more frames he does manage to get to a place that feels close enough to _sexy_ , but not without resorting to the sort of awkward mental gymnastics he would never confess to anyone.

~

"Ugh," Loki complains as Darcy hands him a stack of proofs. "I look like her scrawny _dog_ or something. What do they call them? Rescue greyhounds, maybe?" He barks for good measure, inwardly daring her to laugh so he can storm out of here, too. When he’s asked to slim down drastically these days, he's too wiry; he's starting to look like an aging dancer. His face is still lovely, sure - their dermatology team is absolutely topnotch, so good they’re practically doing magic, and he's religiously avoided the sun forever - and he can't deny he photographs well, but he isn't fond of the way the years are looking on his body. "Or a crack whore."

Darcy turns back to her computer and examines one of the shots more closely on the large display. "Oh, I don't know. It's not a bad look for you. But I think I'd like you better in what she's wearing."

He shifts in his chair, letting his other foot - the one he'd had tucked up underneath him, because off the clock he can sit as ill-advisedly as he'd like to… especially when Leah isn't here to chastise him, which she isn't; she's off getting herself and Darcy coffee - drop to the floor with a clunk. "Ooh, yeah, maybe." Both of them are facing away from the camera. The lighting is nearly all overhead, dramatic and stark. Loki is nude, stretched up on his tiptoes, hands clutching a ring that hangs high above his head. The young actress is topless, decked out in the kind of expensive black lace panties and sheer stockings that approach a week's salary.

He does have the legs for it, more than most anyone else does. And compared to the girl he’s very, very tall. He hums. "But with back seams, don’t you think? That would look hotter."

She whistles, and then does laugh after all. But by now Loki's ugly mood is broken.

He doesn't thank her this time, either.

~

"Don't think we’ve forgotten, Darcy and I," Leah says around a bite of meat. She licks a bit of sauce off one finger. They're headed home in the morning after a second short assignment, this one also in Stockholm. Loki's in a much better mood today, though; no new booking for at least three weeks means he can afford to indulge a little. He's not quite sure exactly what he's eating, but it's rich and a bit salty and falling-apart tender. 

"That we owe you one," she goes on when he raises his eyebrows. His forehead isn't as prone to wrinkling as it could be; so far, he's managed to avoid a date with Botox. The woman who does his facials keeps threatening, though. "Remember? For how you acted out, let’s call it, when you didn't like the shoot before this one."

He studies her face for a moment. She smirks at him. He doesn’t think he likes where this is going. "Why do I suddenly feel like _owe me one_ actually means _punish me_?"

At that she throws her head back and laughs. Too long. He's fucked; he knows it. "Now why would you think that?" She wipes her eyes. "I'm here to help you. I just meant the next thing I'm lining up will let you cover up some. And you won't be shooting with any- any children."

He frowns. Her tone of voice isn't making him feel the least bit better. "So,” he can’t help trying, even though he knows it’s all but hopeless, “tell me: what is it, then?"

"Ah-ah," Leah chides. She offers him another chunk of meat; he opens his mouth by reflex and takes it carefully without nipping her fingers. Whatever they have between them, and he supposes they do have _something_ , it certainly isn't that. "The contract's not final. I'll let you in on it once Darcy knows it’s definitely happening."

Yeah, for sure: fucked. If it's a secret, and Darcy and Leah are in cahoots, Loki’s positive he’s going to be paying.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

"No!" Loki knows his voice is embarrassingly shrill but he's too irate to care. "Just fucking no. Not now, not ever. Put someone else on it." He would sooner die than do this. Seriously. "I'll fucking quit. I swear I will."

"Don't be stupid," Darcy says. She's all business this time, which is all that's keeping him from- from clawing her fucking eyes out. "This is a huge contract, for a worldwide multimedia campaign. And you've been wanting to move in a new direction, one more suited to your _maturity_." She spits out the last of it, like she's pointing out that he just tracked shit onto the carpet. "It's an ideal opportunity. Not to mention you are not just the best but our only candidate."

"Oh, bullshit," he snaps. "You're just doing this to hurt me."

"Well, I’m not sure I'm going to cry a river over that part," she says, "especially given how you’re acting right now. But, no, I'm doing it to get all of us lots of fame and money. You know? It’s called just doing my job. Exactly the way you're going to."

~

"I can't," Loki roars. Leah uncrosses her legs and crosses them the other way. "I won't. I can’t,” he tries again. He can’t remember the last time he was this upset. “This is ridiculous."

"Loki," she says when he can't seem to stop howling. "This isn't the end of the world. And did you _see_ the samples? Their work is incredible. You are so, so perfect for this one. Better than anyone out there."

"And none of that," he snarls, "even if it’s true, has one single fucking thing to do with why it's happening." He's so upset he can't think straight. No one can make him see Th-.

"Believe it or not, it actually does," Leah says, unwittingly cutting him off mid-thought. "They came to us, not the other way around. Darcy can show you the paperwork. And they didn't request you specifically, either. Just gave physical characteristics and style requirements... that happen to have Lang D'Argent written all over them."

"And you expect me to believe all of this is just happy fucking coincidence," Loki rasps. He's yelled so much and so long that his voice is going. "How stupid do you people think I am, exactly?"

Leah winces at the _you people_. Loki doesn’t care. She fucking deserves it.

"Not stupid enough to throw away this sort of opportunity." Leah sighs. "Sleep on it. You'll feel more- solid in the morning." She gets to her feet and slowly straightens, smoothing her long knit skirt over her tights. "Oh, and Loki?" She looks over her shoulder as she’s pulling on her wrap. “For all we know he won’t even be there.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki listens to reason. And then regrets it.

~~o~~  
Sem (Tonsberg), Norway  
20 years ago  
~~o~~

_A butterfly lands on Loki’s knee. Its feet tickle. He watches – silent, motionless - as it spends close to a minute sunning itself and then flies away. All around them summer is in full swing. "Now, this is living." He rolls up onto one elbow and studies Thor, who in turn is watching the widely scattered clouds sail by. There's just enough of a breeze to keep the day from crossing over into sweltering. "When you grow up,” Loki suggests, “I think you should be a shepherd."_

_Thor squints up at him, smiling. It's one of those glorious early summer days where it's not yet light nearly around the clock and even the locals – especially the young ones, to hear his parents tell it - can easily pretend winter's endless dark is gone forever._

_"And if I do? What are you going to do, then?" Thor is chewing a long, dried stalk of grass the exact same color as his hopelessly unruly hair. He shields his eyes with one hand. "Sit up in the old farmstead reading and eating sweets," he teases, "until you're plump and hopelessly lazy?"_

_Loki doesn't laugh, despite how the picture Thor's painting actually is (ridiculous, but) kind of funny. "I want to see the world," he says. "I don't think I want to stay here. But I can come visit," he hurries to add when Thor sits up, frowning. "Whenever you want me to."_

_"No! You can't leave," Thor insists. He snags Loki's rather grubby hand and turns it palm-up, so both of their long-healed scars are showing. Loki's forms a very slightly raised, pale-pink line across his palm; Thor's is a pale tracing that feels just like the surrounding skin but never tans as much as the rest of him. "Remember? We're blood brothers."_

_Oh, Loki remembers, all right. They’d gotten in so much trouble._

_One of the Buhunds sneezes and scratches at its chin with big, slow kicks. Its collar clanks and jingles. The other one yawns and then rolls over onto its back in the long grass, white belly and feet in the air. Loki snickers when the dog stretches to pinch its herding partner right in the fluffy britches. Not hard… barely enough to qualify as a nip, especially through all that hair, but the whole business launches some enthusiastic doggy wrestling anyway. "Hey, stop it," Thor exclaims as Loki pulls free and smacks his own hands together. It's that time of year; the dogs are blowing their coats like crazy. "Both of you! Go shed somewhere else, can’t you? Gross."_

_"Now what was that you were saying?" Loki does laugh this time, loudly, as he watches Thor try (in vain) to wipe his sweaty face free of the endless, thick puffs of dog hair. "Were you trying to talk me into staying here? Because 'anywhere else' is looking pretty good all of a sudden."_

_"No," Thor says again. He spits to get a particularly stubborn bit off the end of his tongue. "You can't go. You- you belong here."_

_~_

_"Look." The lamb is soft and warm, its gangly legs dangling. Every time Loki tries to heft it closer to his face and nuzzle it, the small, grumpy thing gnaws at his arm. "How can anybody eat one?" He's never understood that. Lambs are impossibly cute, and wool is a good way to eke out a perfectly acceptable living. And it's not like there aren’t tons of fish here. No one who forgoes lamb is going to lack for protein. "Just the idea of it makes me sad."_

_"Me, too." Thor comes over, bucket and rake in one hand. He’s sweaty and streaked with dirt. He chucks Loki's lamb under the chin; in return, it (yet again) bites Loki._

_"Hey!" Loki wasn’t expecting it this time; he inadvertently sets the lamb down a little more abruptly than he means to. "Don't make me take back what I said, little guy."_

_Thor snorts. "Right," he scoffs, but still nicely. "Like you ever would." His brows pull together the way they always do when he's concentrating. "You’ll see, though. When this place is mine," he adds, with his usual conviction, and a little piece of Loki's heart hurts, "I'm going to find a way to keep it going without killing any of them:"_

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

They’re eating their takeout straight from the cartons, which is (anything but classy, sure, but it’s) fine with Loki. His cleaning woman has taken a few days off – her daughter recently gave birth, and she’d asked for a little time to spend with her new granddaughter and daughter – and already he’s beyond tired of washing his dishes.

Leah's mouse ticks softly as she scrolls and scrolls. "Did you take a look at this stuff," she asks around a mouthful of salad. From where Loki's sitting on the sofa kitty-corner behind her, he can – if he squints a little - see she's reviewing Aes Fleece and Cloth's website. He actually did poke idly through their site earlier - okay, that's a lie; he'd studied it in great detail - but he has no intention of admitting anything. And, yes, he's had time to think this through and to reach a point where he can actually be reasonable. No, he has no intention whatsoever of sharing that with either Leah or Darcy. It’s good for them to sweat a little. "Their things are gorgeous. Not at all what I expected."

It hadn't been what Loki'd expected either, really. He'd been thinking suiting, or maybe the kinds of high-end knit pieces that men who lead the going-to-the-club sort of life wear when they- well, go there.

Whatever he’d pictured, it was certainly not this: not acres and acres of soft, loose afghans. Not delicate, gossamer knitwear that's just this side of completely transparent. Some of the wool they use is undyed; the rest reflects the lovely, muted palette of the Nordic winter landscape. Soft blues, greys, and dusky purples, shot through here and there with perfect indigos and blacks so dark he’d felt like he could disappear into them.

Loki’d looked at the portfolio pictures a long, long time. And then he’d taken a break… and found himself unable to stay away. He’d even made himself suffer through an interview with _one of the principal design leads_ \- absolutely not the job title he would have envisioned, not for the Thor he’d grown up with - earlier in the afternoon. But the interview itself had proved far less out-of-character… there'd been a lot of talk about the utilization of natural, environmentally-safe dyes and the careful practice of cruelty-free animal husbandry. Quite a bit about staying true to a lifelong vision, a quick plug for Norsk dogs, and then the hard part: a heart-wrenching sound bite about owing it all to a dear, dear friend. "No, unfortunately," Thor had told the interviewer (convincingly sadly, even; Thor had actually looked as though he might cry) when asked if that friend had been able to visit. "Because he- well, he died long before I could bring our childhood dreams to fruition." And then Thor had looked down, away from the camera, and slowly, pensively _rubbed a thumb across the palm of his hand_.

That? That had done it.

It had taken Loki four tries before he could get through the whole video without choking up and bawling. And even the fourth viewing left him feeling like he’d been stabbed.

Of course, he won't be telling Leah and Darcy any of _that_ , either.

"I can see why they want the right model so badly," Leah says. Loki rolls his eyes at the back of her head; she can't possibly know the half of it. "And you really are going to look stunning in this stuff. Especially with such a perfect photographer. His camera worships you."

The photographer in question kind of worships him, too. Had, at least, before Leah'd stepped in to remind the guy Loki really wasn't available for public consumption. The last thing Loki needs is to be somebody’s muse. The. Very. Last. Thing. He snorts.

"Or something," he tells her, drily. "The guy just wants another look at my nipples."

"Well, duh. The entire world wants another look at your nipples," Leah teases. "How can anyone not? It's because they're so perky,” she teases, once again managing to duck just in time as he wings a small throw pillow at her. "Hey! Watch the food. Seriously, though… come look.” She pats the seat of the chair next to her. “Now. This stuff will win you over."

It might have already... except he still isn't telling.

“Oh, and here,” she adds, and the shift in tone actually does make him pop up to look this time. “There’s an interview with your Thor guy. We should-.”

 _Oh shit oh shit oh shit_. “Yeah, don’t bother,” Loki scoffs. “I took a quick look earlier. The usual self-promoting drivel.”

Leah turns to smirk at him. “And of course you aren’t biased.”

“No,” Loki agrees, returning her smirk and struggling to sound natural. “Not at all.”

He breathes a long, carefully silent sigh of relief when she clicks back over to the portfolio pictures instead. The model is a tall, slender woman with an expressive face and long, dark hair. Her eyes are wide-set and the same silver-grey as the loose-knit top she’s wearing. “You’ll be a perfect fit for this stuff, you know?” Leah smiles at him, nicely this time. “I know this isn’t setting well with you, I do. But on you their clothing is going to be gorgeous. And it’s a great chance to help boost another company from Norway. Not that you care about that personally,” she hastens to add when he wrinkles his nose at her sentimentality, “but it’s always handy to have good work nearby. It’s that much less travel, I mean. What’s not to like about good clients within driving distance?”

Annoyingly, she’s not wrong. The older he gets, the less easily Loki bounces back from the bloating and parched skin international travel invariably causes. Not only his quality of life (and there’s a term that makes him gag, if ever there was one) but his pictures would benefit from a long-term stint as a spokesmodel for a solid local company. And Aes… well, they seem to be perfectly positioned to break into the global market; to do well while doing good. And they’re not just packing fish for a living. He could do a lot worse, and he knows it.

Leah knows it, too.

It’s incredibly fucking annoying, actually.

~

“Yeah, okay,” he tells Darcy grudgingly. He doesn’t have to fake that part; even though he’s managed to warm up to the job itself, his disgust at how she _told him so_ (and won’t hesitate to remind him… for an eternity) is completely genuine. “I’ll do the shoot. You’re right; I’m the best person for it. But no long-term contracts at this point. Not until we’ve gotten through this initial engagement and seen for ourselves how they really are to work with.” He frowns, even though he’s on one end of the phone conversation and she’s on the other. “I mean, you know as well as I do; sounding good on paper is easy. Let’s see what they can deliver.”

“Look at you pretending you work in the business office,” she teases. “Aren’t you cute. Maybe we can switch you to the back office after all, when it’s finally time to put you out to pasture. But, thanks,” she adds, more seriously, over his angry hiss. “I’ll let them know. They’ll be really pleased to hear it. They’ve been checking back every couple of days, you know.”

“Of course they have been,” he tells her. “We’re the best. _I’m_ the best. They’ve been scouting us out; they know that.” It’s not untrue. In fact, were it not for the emails and the business in New York City, even Loki would believe it.

~

The announcement goes out to Aes Friday morning. Loki’s all for letting them sweat about it through the weekend, but Darcy thinks sending it Friday is an easy way to build goodwill. Darcy’s in charge of that kind of thing; Loki isn’t. He gives up without a huge fight, because he doesn’t feel like listening while she points that out. Yet again. Especially because, while she’s too short and too curvy for fashion or editorial work, she’s got the face and body to do perfectly fine in lingerie. Whereas, silver tongue or no, there’s no way Loki’s attitude would get him anything but fired in marketing.

~

By Monday – and the whole thing feels real, now; the inaugural shoot is a month away – Darcy’s made sure (at his request, this time) Loki’s already got extra sessions booked with Nat. He’s not going into this assignment looking anything less than 100%, even if it kills him. Which it won’t, even though he’s positive he’s going to want it to.

He doesn’t stalk Aes’ site during the workday. He’s too busy getting buff and making arrangements for his hand-selected, locally-sourced, all-organic juice cleanse. That, and there’s a certain hard-and-fast line he’s not willing to cross when it comes to flaunting his desperation.

After what would otherwise have been dinner, though, Loki’s home alone and he just- he can’t help it. Research. That’s what this is. _Research._

And sure enough, there’s a new interview on Aes’ news page. Rather than Thor, though, this one features Old Man Odin Borson himself. Loki whistles. Because even to himself, he’s _not_ going to admit he’s a little disappointed. Or, rather, he wouldn’t if he was. Because of course he isn’t. It’s flattering to be the kind of Big News worthy of a CEO’s mention. And mention, and mention. The thing is more than 8 minutes long.

Loki yawns and prepares to be bored stiff.

“Are you pleased to have landed someone of Lang D’Argent’s caliber,” the interviewer asks. She’s off-screen, but her voice is businesslike and pleasant.

“Of course,” Odin says, and Loki snickers. It’s a weekend interview, and Odin is dressed in Tasteful Local Casual. “He has the perfect look for our brand, and we’re very pleased to work with someone who’s based here in Norway. Our family has lived in this country for many generations, and it means a lot to me to be able to spend our money locally.”

After several minutes of that sort of thing Loki zones out, barely paying attention as Odin drones on and on about being a good corporate citizen. In fact, he’s about ready to click off the site and go do something more entertaining when he hears it: “-donating 5% of the profits to one of the largest suicide hotlines in Norway?”

“This new line is my son’s,” Odin explains without missing a beat, “and this particular cause is one that’s always been very important to him. He often says he dreams of a day when every Norwegian teen facing mental health or substance abuse challenges has the right treatment options readily available. He’s going to be running this company someday,” Odin goes on. There’s more, but all Loki hears is static.

He’s far too busy freaking out; he’s got nothing left for listening.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Knit together, pulled apart.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

A month sounds like an eternity, but at Loki's age it really isn't one. Not anymore. He barely has enough time to double up on his usual efforts to whip himself into perfect shape before the shoot is looming right up ahead, just on the far side of one last weekend. And there’s so much to do to get ready. Especially when it really _matters_ , as much as he’s trying to pretend otherwise. Facial, a few days beforehand in case his skin rebels. Paraffin hand treatment. Manicure. Pedicure. Normally he would start carefully shaving his body about now, everywhere the client wanted it; for this job, though, the team at Aes had looked at his full portfolio and asked that he be- au naturel when au naturel, apparently.

Not that he's a bear of a man; even at his absolute wooliest, he’s not particularly wooly. Excepting the brown-black, curly fur at his groin and the similarly dark shadows in his armpits, his body hair is uniformly fine and soft. From camera distance he looks like a pencil drawing. Delicate. Ethereal. Carefully shaded. It's not a look most of his clients want for nude or nearly nude work. Consequently, the whole idea makes him feel oddly self-conscious. Still, what the client wants the client gets… so he leaves his fuzz alone and tries his best to ignore it.

"It's wool," Leah reminds him when he stresses one time too many about the weird silhouette he's going to present with a full compliment of pubes, "not lingerie. Why would they want you to look like a fairy princess?" She frowns. "Plus, isn't it better this way? For you, I mean, and your Deep, Dark Secret?"

Loki wrinkles his nose and then immediately thinks the better of it. Sure, Aes may want him with hair; that doesn't mean they want him with wrinkles. "How so?" Nothing about him feels- _right_. He’s not himself right now, physically or mentally. On top of which, he absolutely hates it when he's not way out in front of her logic.

"He knew you as a child, this Thor guy. The last time he saw you in the flesh - and don't try and pretend he didn't; even back in those days people didn’t resort to drastic measures over smoldering glances and baseless vows of chastity - you were a teen. How is it going to help your cover to show up looking vaguely pre-pubescent?"

She's absolutely right, of course. Which makes it easily twice as annoying that she’d also been- quicker. Secretly knowing his body right down to the smattering of tiny moles along his left hipbone is just the sort of thing Thor might be capable of doing. Loki’s certainly not above the same, in reverse. "Oh, right," he scoffs anyway. His pride is stinging. "As if. After I left he probably fucked half of Norway."

Because Loki had, of course. All those construction workers and a kid or two from the hostel. No one from the agency, because: don't shit where you eat, but more than one of the guys at the coffee shop and two or three hungry actors. Getting out of New York and back here when he did had been a wise and good thing, probably. "I doubt he remembers a thing about me."

And then he thinks back to that stupid interview - Thor gently rubbing one broad palm, like it really meant something - and feels prickly and dizzy.

~

The day before the shoot Loki's favorite stylist washes his hair and blows it out for him. The client wants those big, fat curls that photograph like the most gorgeous natural wave ever but are oh-so-much trickier than flat-ironing, so she sends Loki and Leah back to his apartment with the soft, flexible curling rods and that positively magical styling spray that smells like minty heaven. "You two do what little you can with it," she orders them, like they haven’t done this together at least a thousand times by now, “and then I'll fix you up when we get there. And again after every second or third shot, of course. Your hair makes me really earn my living," she complains, but he knows she not-so-secretly loves it. "Now go roll up this mop and get some sleep," she reminds him. "Because we need to be on the road stupid early."

~~o~~  
Tonsberg, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

The shoot isn't at Aes' facility, thank goodness. It isn't out in Sem, either, which is even more fortunate; Loki's already more nervous than he's been in over a decade and if someone makes him hold a lamb he'll surely vomit (up the two teaspoons, max, of coffee he'd been able to choke down earlier). Instead it's at one of the nature preserves outside town, which makes for the kind of unpredictable imperfect conditions (the crews all despise, but) Loki lives for. "You'll be fine," he chants near-silently as they climb out of the van and head to the thrown-together dressing room to get the real work started. This is nothing special, after all. It's just one more day of pretending to want to fuck this obnoxious photographer.

He can do this.

~

When Loki touches the first of the lovely, lovely blankets, all his panic is instantly forgotten. "Oh, my," he breathes, with nothing but the most sincere reverence. "They don't need me, Leah; this stuff will sell itself. Feel it!" It's as soft and light as the floss that carries milkweed seeds to their far-flung destinations.

It's all he can do not to haul it all onto the floor and roll around in it.

She sinks her hands into the pile of throws and purrs. “Oooh,” she sighs, like this is a normal conversation and she’s not the only one with clothes on. Loki's once again grateful to have a good friend who's not weirded out by seeing him naked, because – no matter what he tells himself - doing this alone would be just about impossible. "Oh, jealous," she adds. "I think you should buy me one, once you're finished draping these lovelies all over yourself. Scratch that; you should buy me five of them."

"Behave," he reminds her, "and maybe I'll think about it."

~

They crowd around the monitor after the first round of photos. The work is all very tasteful, with never more than a faint hint of his junk showing through the fabric. They've done some where he's looking off into the distance, where the spotlight's on the wool and he's looking for all the world like a marble angel, and others where he’s looking right into the camera and his eyes will burn right off the page. It’s- well, it’s great. Whatever Aes wants, looking at these pictures, he's confident he's nailed it.

His stomach unclenches, finally.

~

They do the knitwear next. It's lovely stuff as well, fine and itch-free and beautifully dyed. To keep from having to deal with the _lines_ all that walking around naked was meant to forestall, they shoot tunic after tunic in two separate sets; first over nothing and then over the softest silk trousers he's ever worn.

The smoke-grey tunic is Loki's personal favorite. He knows what he's treating himself to and taking home. Along with, yes, Leah’s blanket. Blankets, rather.

They shoot for hours. By the time they've gotten everything they want, in all the changing colors of a day's worth of light, Loki's so tired he's shaking.

~

"We're good," the director tells him after a quick run through the last round of photos. From the look on her face, she can see that he's spent and then some. "Go clean up, why don’t you, and then we'll get you out of here."

He's put his hair up in a loose bun and finally gotten everything off his face and neck when he hears it: the voice from the press clips. The interviews. The voice he remembers like it was yesterday, with a heavy bass undertone that hadn't yet taken root when he'd left his whole life behind in Norway.

_Fuck_.

"Oh," Thor says, like he's praying. "These are absolutely amazing." There's a little pleased chatter Loki can't quite make out; probably the crew fawning over their special new customer. Over the man behind these admittedly incredible fabric creations. And then, "no, not at all! It's actually more than I'd even hoped for. Speaking of which... is Monsieur D'Argent still here?" Thor's voice shifts, like he's looking around the set. Like he's fucking _hopeful_. Loki can't fucking breathe. This- this isn't happening. "Because I'd love the chance to thank him for this beautiful body of work. Personally, I mean. Not just with money."

Loki’s heart stops. Literally stops, for so long he’s sure he’s just died. And wouldn’t _that_ be its own special brand of irony? But the thing starts beating again on its own, at least twice as fast as it should be, and he puts a hand flat on his makeshift dressing table to keep from falling over.

“Let me check,” he hears Leah saying. “Wait here for a moment, please.”

The metal hooks clatter as she carefully makes her way past the curtain. “Did you- oh, yeah, I see you did.” She looks him up and down, her face worried. “Are you okay? And what do you want me to tell him? He seems pretty cool,” she adds when Loki hesitates. “But you’re the boss. I won’t meddle.”

Normally he’d remind her that she certainly does and will meddle, at every chance she gets. Just staying upright on his little wooden bench is more than enough challenge right now, though, so he behaves himself and doesn’t. “Um,” he manages. “Give me a second. This is harder than I thought it would be.”

“I can tell him you’re already out in the van,” she says. “If that’s what you really want.”

It is, and yet it isn’t. Plus it’s not like this is some one-day thing in Milan or Madrid or New York… _the customer_ clearly loved their work, meaning they’re going to be back here over and over. Which, also ironically, is just what they – the agency, Leah and Darcy; even Loki if he’s honest with himself about it – were hoping would happen.

_Be careful what you ask for_ , he reminds himself. _You might get it._

“Loki? What’s it going to be? He’s not going to stand out there waiting forever.”

Actually, after what he’s learned in the past few weeks, Loki begs to differ with her. He thinks Thor might willingly stand there for the rest of their lives, patiently waiting, if that’s what it took to get in here. “It’s okay,” he says softly. “Go ahead. Send him in.”

“Seriously?”

“Mm,” he hums. “Just do it.”

~

It’s a tiny space. Loki and Leah together crowd it; add Thor and it’s bursting to overflowing. So much so, in fact, that Thor can only get halfway inside. “It’s okay,” Loki tells Leah in the manufactured French accent he affects when it suits his purposes. “You don’t have to stay in here. He” – he sneaks a quick glance at Thor in the mirror – “doesn’t seem particularly dangerous.” Which is the biggest lie of them all, of course. Not that there’s any reason for her to know that.

Leah hovers for a few seconds, visibly struggling with what to say next. “Okay, _Lang_ ,” she says, finally. “Yell if you need anything. Excuse me, Mr. Odinson,” she adds as Thor has to back out to make way for her. “Thanks! And I should warn you… when he’s tired like this, he can be a little cranky.”

“Uh- hi,” Thor says, too brightly, once they’re alone. The two of them make very brief eye contact in the mirror. “I- I just- those are some lovely pictures you did today. Um. Sorry. This is so awkward. You just- you remind me of someone I knew. A long time ago. But you are- never mind. I’m babbling.” He looks incredibly uncomfortable. It’s a good look on him, just like it was all those years ago. “Anyway, I won’t take up your time. I’m sure you want to get out of here. So. Uh,” he adds as Loki sits quietly. “Thank you again.”

_Now or never, now or never_. Loki’s head is spinning. If he’d managed to eat today, he’d be sick for sure. “Yeah,” he says, “I know. Loki. Loki Laufeyson.”

Thor’s cheeks flush rosy pink, and that’s a good look too. “Oh, great,” he says. “They- Darcy _told_ you about that, did she? I must seem like the world’s worst stalker.”

Loki shuts his eyes. “No. I mean, yes, she did tell me. But that’s not what I meant.” He drops the accent in favor of his natural one. “That’s my birth name. I just don’t use it much anymore.” He feels and hears, rather than sees, Thor’s gut reaction. Which is a quick indrawn breath, and then- nothing. For so long Loki thinks Thor might have slipped away.

Vanished. After all that.

Which would serve him right, after all.

When Loki opens his eyes again Thor is (still right there behind him, and) whiter than he would have thought possible. And clutching the doorframe with both hands, as thought the room is collapsing around them. “You have a scar across the palm of your left hand,” Loki tells him, voice very soft. “Just a thin, white line. And I have its- its partner.”

Thor clears his throat. “That can’t-… Fine. Show me.”

Loki shifts on the bench, turning until his back is mostly to the mirror and his knees are right up against Thor’s muscled leg. For the first time he’s uncomfortable wearing just a robe and nothing under it. Nothing but fluffy socks, anyway. He isn’t sure where to look. Breathing is taking a lot of work again, suddenly. “Here,” he forces out, holding his hand up. “It’s pretty much invisible. You’ll have to- to touch it.”

He looks at the makeshift floor and counts all the way to twenty-seven before Thor’s warm fingertip tickles his palm.

“Holy shit,” Thor says, falling heavily against the doorframe. The whole dressing room rocks. His voice is rough. “Loki. This- this- fuck. I can’t- I don’t- this isn’t possible.”

“Actually,” Loki whispers, “it is.”

He’s not sure what to expect… whether Thor will stomp out or yell or pull back and fucking punch him. Because that’s what he deserves, and then some. He’s definitely _not_ expecting what _does_ happen though:

Thor somehow manages to drop to kneeling without crushing Loki’s feet in the process. He wraps both huge arms around Loki’s waist, buries his face in the robe just barely covering Loki’s thigh, and starts sobbing.

On cue, Leah peeks in at the curtain. She looks appropriately shocked and uncomfortable. “Everything okay in here?”

“I don’t know,” Loki says, because he doesn’t. He’s not sure if things will ever be okay again, now that he’s turned his whole life upside down in less than ten sentences. “I told him.”

“Oh,” Leah says, as thought she hasn’t been right outside listening for the entire conversation. “Yeah. Wow. I’ll give you guys a little space, then.” Her face disappears, curtains settling back into place where she’d just been.

Loki coughs. He has no idea where to put his hands. “Leah is just my friend,” he says, stupidly. Like he has any right to think Thor would still care about his dating habits or lack thereof after all these years.

“She’s nice,” Thor mumbles wetly into his robe. “I like her. Look, I’m sorry. I- I just- it’s a lot to take in, you know?”

“Yeah,” Loki says. He snorts a little. “I think I do, actually.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After doing comes thinking, or napping. Maybe napping.

~~o~~  
Tonsberg, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Loading the van seems to take an eternity, even (especially?) because Loki isn’t (as always; not that he would anyway, but it’s also specifically not what he’s here for) actually helping. Instead he's curled up in one of the big bucket seats pretending to sleep, if only to keep Leah (who _is_ helping, likely comfortable doing so only because Loki isn't looking like he needs minding presently) from holing up in here next to him and asking prying questions.

One thing he's expressly _not_ doing? Thinking in ridiculous detail about how Thor's lips had felt brushing lightly against his own. The way that overwhelming, almost unbearable spark had still been there, as strong as ever. No, letting Thor steal even just that one small kiss had been a stupid, stupid move and Loki is certainly not cuddled up in his seat in his nice new cozy wrap obsessively dwelling upon it.

No. What’s he’s doing is- is nothing like that, nothing at all.

~

"I'm not asleep," he says flatly as Leah shushes the crew for the umpteenth time. "Don't slow them down any more, for the love of-..." He cuts himself off; Leah misses nothing and if he sounds half as wound-up as he feels she won't give him a single moment's peace once she finally gets him alone later. "I'm really tired," he explains, carefully pulling three quarters of the emotion back out of his voice. "And hungry. I just want to get home already. Which, um, means we need to actually get started." It's at least an hour and a half’s drive back from here, probably closer to two (or more) by the time Leah drops him all the way back at his apartment. And while he's probably still going to be too keyed up to eat anything, he's certainly looking forward to- relaxing. Alone, ideally, although that's probably far too much to hope for.

"Yes, sir, Lang d'Lazy-Ass," she fires back mock-deferentially, even though his job in all this is to look amazing - which he did, all day - and not to lug around boxes and crates with the support staff. "Hurry it up, kids," she leans out to call to the rest of them. "His royal highness is getting cranky."

Just outside the van door someone has the nerve to snicker. Loki makes careful mental note to ponder, select, and enact the appropriate sort of retribution later. Some days it’s the little things he lives for.

~

"I do have to say," Leah whispers, leaning close as they (finally!) make their bumping, rattling way down the long drive and pitching her voice for his ears only, "he's awfully pretty in person. And _nice_. He’s so much nicer than you made him sound… but then that’s typical, isn’t it?"

"Leave it," Loki warns, equally softly. It’s hard to be both quiet and threatening. "I don't plan on talking about- about any of this," _about what happened_ , he doesn’t add, because that’s just an open invitation for a long, painful evening of what will amount to focused interrogation. “Not tonight, not ever. So don’t even bother getting your hopes up.”

Leah smiles. “Sure. Keep telling yourself that, Lang. Whatever it takes to get by.”

~~o~~  
Sem (Tonsberg), Norway  
15 years ago  
~~o~~

_"You haven't ever done this before, have you? You haven’t- let anyone?" Thor's strained expression is completely out of place considering he's got Loki sprawled half-naked (the middle half… or quarter, really; it’s cold today, too cold despite the sun, so they’ve kept as much as possible properly covered) across his lap and cooking oil dripping from two of his fingers. His pale eyebrows pinch together. He looks- anxious, and a little annoyed, and something darker that reeks of jealousy._

_Loki loves it, that last bit especially. "With what, Thor? Seriously," he pants, laughing and wriggling. His dick is twitching, squashed against Thor's thigh, and he’s secretly nervous as fuck; he'd really like to get on with this already. "One of the sheep? The dogs, maybe? Or perhaps you're thinking of dear old Vidar?"_

_Vidar is the ancient shepherd who's officially still in charge of this flock. The man perpetually reeks of fish and can barely get around on the uneven, rocky slopes anymore. Loki can’t quite remember the last time they saw Vidar up here, or even anywhere outside the rough stone building that serves as the nursery and business office. He and Thor often joke about how the poor old guy’s dick must have shriveled up and fallen off at least thirty years ago._

_"I just don't want to share you is all," Thor says. An oily finger drifts over Loki's tailbone; it’s cold and slippery, and Loki -whether from that or the heavy (and welcome, very welcome) possessiveness in Thor's voice… or both, probably - shivers. "You don't have to be mean about it."_

_Sulking and pouting are Loki's job; Thor doesn't need to get in on that particular action. Especially now, of all times. "Look,” Loki reminds Thor, “there's no one but you. I barely even know any other people. But if we're just going to sit here and argue," he adds, writhing what he hopes is seductively against Thor's pants, "do you think I can put my clothes back on? Because I'm kind of- freezing."_

_"Shh," Thor hisses, sharply, and that's not his job either. “Stop talking.” But then he's got Loki’s head wrenched around by the chin - with his clean hand, at least; Loki doesn’t really want a faceful of oi- ah, fuck - and is leaning down to force their mouths together roughly._

_At the first opportunity Loki nips Thor’s lip, hard, with a degree of bravery he only half feels. They’re of an age, but Thor could easily overpower him. Which is part of what he likes about the two of them together, maybe. "Make me."_

_Thor doesn't, of course. If anything, what he does do just makes Loki all that much noisier._

_~_

_Loki's honestly never tried anything like this before, not even with his own comparatively slender fingers. But he knows he wants to, badly. And he knows people put a lot bigger things in there without anything bad happening._

_Thor on the other hand swears he's tried it, on himself. “Plenty of times,” to quote. When Loki (a little breathlessly, yes, but that’s not the point!) calls him on it, on account of way too much almost painfully clumsy fumbling, Thor actually dares a quick swat that’s practically a spanking. “Behave,” Thor says as Loki bristles. “This is different.”_

_"Yeah," Loki complains (except maybe he isn't actually complaining because they're barely doing a thing and yet he's hard as a rock and practically cross-eyed already). "It's different all right, because it’s my hole you're jabbing. Stop trying to poke me a new one. Oww oww holy shit," he huffs as Thor finally aims properly and breaches him – with just one finger, but a little too much force – and slides inside fast, all the way up to the knuckles. It hurts and it’s weird and oh god oh god oh god he’s going to- oh please- oh, fuck, yes. “Thooorrr.”_

_Thor freezes. "Are you okay," he asks, looking and sounding worried, his voice cracking a little. He leans over and peers into Loki's scrunched-up face as Loki jerks and twitches. It would be annoyingly distracting, except for how it’s too late anyway; Loki's come all over his pant leg already._

_For a minute or so neither one of them says or does anything. They’re trying to catch their breath, and Loki’s waiting to see if you really can die of humiliation._

_Finally, Thor clears his throat. “I guess we should clean up,” he says. “Before someone comes up here or something.”_

_No one’s come up here since they were six. Just now, though, it seems stupidly logical and Loki has no intention of arguing._

_Cleaning up turns out to be much less fun than getting dirty was. His body feels even weirder (and Thor’s finger even longer) when Thor slips slowly and carefully back out. Loki’s face is absolutely fucking burning. He’s still gasping for air as though he’s run all the way up the hillside. "If you laugh, I swear I'll grab a rock and bash your head in," he rasps, his own voice just as rough as Thor’s had been. There are handy rocks all around them. "And don’t think I don’t mean it."_

_Thor doesn't laugh. In fact, he says nothing. He’s still panting a little too, actually._

_It isn't until Loki scrambles to his knees and is fighting to pull his own pants back up over his cold, sticky-slimy skin that he sees the dark stain – the shiny wetness - way up by Thor's own waistband._

_Oh. Ohhh._

_He feels abruptly- proud. Proud, and better. And a little shy, but he keeps that to himself because Thor seems cheerfully back to normal._

_~_

_For a few hours things down there- they feel funny. So much so that Loki’s almost afraid to go to the bathroom. By the time he’s washed up and ready for supper, though, he’s firmly telling himself that any sense of lingering discomfort must be in his head._

_By the next morning he’s over whatever’d gotten to him and ready to try again. Thor, conveniently, seems utterly free of regrets or doubts and more than ready to please him._

_So, try again they do. It’s not like the sheep mind._

_The dogs are curious at first, but herding is their real business and they quickly tire of trying to interfere. And then it’s just Thor and Loki. Hot breath and strong, purposeful hands and little bottles of commandeered oil._

_~_

_Over the next few weeks they keep at it, learning and working until they know they’ve really got it down. And while they don’t talk about it, of course, it’s hard to ignore the way they’re both hopelessly hooked on it too. Every day up in the hills is a little colder and a little shorter; the two of them are spurred on by the awful certainty that, once winter sets in for real, they will be forced to last months on end without much of any chance to be together. Together alone, at least, and not wrapped in so many layers of clothing that touching actual bare skin is close to impossible._

_They’ll be in one another’s company plenty, all through the holidays, surrounded by an endless sea of families and friends. Burning with need, but never satiated. It’s going to be the purest torture imaginable. Loki is dreading it already_.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

"Hey, kiddo." Loki flails, his head rolling back and forth on the seat back. His mouth tastes like dirt and he isn’t sure if he’s awake or dreaming. "Wake up. We're home." Awake, then. Ugh. He’s groggy and shaky and nauseated, with too short a nap and too long a day behind him. "Let's get you inside," Leah suggests, tugging gently at his arm, "so the rest of these guys can go unload everything."

Loki's too out of it – and too busy trying not to fall, for that matter - to really thank anyone as he lets Leah half-drag him out of the van. He's not sure he cares. It’s a modeling agency. These guys work day in and day out with an endless assortment of divas and princesses; they're used to it.

~

"Okay, no arguing," Leah insists when they're up in Loki’s apartment and she's gotten him steered over to his own sofa. He’s still wrapped in his nice new blanket, too, and struggling not to think about things. "I'm ordering us something for dinner... and I'm not leaving until you've eaten your fair share of it. Got that?"

"Mm." Loki thinks about pointing out that he can always outlast her, and that she's forgotten a change of clothes and a toothbrush, but after the day he’s had bickering feels like far too much work and he really can't be bothered.

"You've got a few days off," she points out, "and you did great today. You deserve a reward. Greasy, maybe, and salty?"

Sure, why not... he's already going to feel like ass in the morning. "And wine," he demands, not even trying to stifle his yawn. “If I’m going to be eating badly, you can bet your ass I’m also going to be drinking.”

"Yeah, no," she kids, except he knows she isn’t actually kidding. "That’s on your dime, Mr. Big Spender. We'll drink a bottle of whatever you've got here already. Because you owe me."

He does, if course, but that that does exactly nothing to guarantee he'll admit it. He cocks an eyebrow at her instead. "For what, exactly? Do tell."

"Not prying into your, um, situation," she explains, and okay, yeah, he really does owe her. "At least not tonight, anyway."


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wine and conversation. And more wine.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Leah pours him another glass and then tops her own off. They’ve already polished off the first bottle of wine and made serious inroads into the second. Loki knows he’s going to pay for this over the next couple of days – twice, even; first, when he wakes up tomorrow feeling like death, and then again the following day when Natasha beats it out of him in training – but he’s coming up against the end of his mini-vacation, his little break from work where he hasn’t had to be perfect and amazing and holy, and damned if he’s not taking full advantage of it. Plus, whatever’s happening here is all Leah’s fault. She’s the one who keeps asking him the difficult questions.

“So.” She sets her glass on the coffee table (on a coaster; even on hiatus Loki refuses to live like a pig and won’t let anyone else get away with it either, because even the very best cleaning lady can’t get white water rings out of good furniture) and relaxes back into her chair. It’s big enough to swallow her whole, and then some. “Did you love him?”

It’s a stupid question, stupid enough that he makes a face at her. “Of course I did,” he huffs. “Almost enough to die for him. Enough to almost die for him?” Loki hiccups and tries to hide it with a little cough. “Whatever. Yes.” He takes another good-sized swallow of wine. It’s good, really good. They shouldn’t be so wasteful, shouldn’t be going through it like it’s water. “But I hated him, too.”

“And do you still, now? All these years later?”

“Still what?” Loki blinks. He thinks of Thor’s lips on his lips the other day, the softest little press against the corner of his mouth that had quickly become a real, live kiss when he’d sucked in a surprised little gasp and turned straight into it. Of Thor’s startlingly blue eyes, and the worried frown creasing the skin between them. “Do I still what, exactly?”

Leah rolls her eyes. It’s a gesture she and Loki both make so often that anyone who doesn’t know better would probably think they’re related. “Whichever. Do you still love him? Do you still _hate_ him? Do you anything him at all, for that matter?”

Loki lets Leah top him off with at least half the remaining wine. She’s been letting him have well more than his fair share all evening. The fact that he’d ordered her to, back at the start when they were still planning on getting pasta (and were still mostly sober), isn’t the point. She should know better. After _all these years_ she should know he can’t be trusted, not where his own brittle heart is concerned. He opens his mouth to say something snarky. “Yes,” he says instead, softly, surprising even himself. He sighs loudly and hiccups again. This one is just too obvious to bother covering… both the hiccup and the slip. “Yes,” he repeats, more firmly this time, “and maybe.”

It’s the best answer he can manage, and far more honest than it should be. Loki’s spent the past week struggling (and failing) to sort out his own feelings. Until that trip to New York, everything had been crystal-clear: Thor had used him, Thor had cheated on him, Thor had relished his death and the freedom it offered. The fact that he’d made every bit of that up in his own sad little teenaged brain, and never once bothered to test its validity, wasn’t one he let trouble him. Why would he? When it came to Thor, he’d clearly been out of sight, out of mind. That much was obvious, and the rest was just gravy.

Now, though, he’s puzzled. Lost. Adrift in a messy, choppy emotional sea of his own stupid making. From everything he’s learned since they took the Aes contract, Thor had indeed been touched by his simulated demise… enough so to still be in public mourning well over a decade later. And of course anything which calls _that_ \- Loki’s long-held _certainty_ that his faked suicide hadn’t even been a speed bump on Thor’s highway – into question casts similar doubt on all the other certainties he’s built his whole adult life around. And even without too much wine that leaves him… in a weird place. Probably a bad place, at least from the standpoint of his own mental stability. Because as much as people may complain about him behind his back, Loki’s asshattery keeps him sane. Mostly.

“Maybe?” Leah echoes, skipping over the yesses completely. “Maybe you still hate him?” Loki nods; Leah stops smiling. “Why,” she asks when he offers nothing. “Beyond taking your suicide at face value, what did he do to you?”

“It was before that. He forgot about me,” Loki starts. The words aren’t even all the way out of his mouth when he realizes he’s sounding- childish. Stupid. “And then he cheated on me. With someone we both knew from home. A _girl_ ,” he spits, because that’s what really irks him.

Leah’s expression shifts from worried to shocked. “A girl? Are you sure? Because from everything I’ve read and seen, Thor Odinson is at least as gay as you are.”

“I’ve slept with girls,” Loki points out a little huffily. “So what’s your point, exactly?”

“You’ve slept with women _for money_ ,” Leah reminds him, just in case he’s somehow forgotten. Which, yeah, he hasn’t. Not even with all this fucking wine, which is still tasting far better than it has any right to… enough so that he doesn’t even wait for Leah to pour him another glass this round. In fact, she only just sits forward in time to stop him from swigging some right out of the bottle. “That has everything to do with obligation and nothing to do with orientation.” She smiles at herself. “I made a poem, didn’t I? Anyway,” she goes on when Loki opens his mouth to say something nasty, “I’ve done a lot of research about this guy and there’s no mention anywhere of any bisexual leanings. In fact, if anything, people think he’s a monk now.”

Loki gasps without meaning to and gets some wine down the wrong way. He coughs and gags, only just barely getting himself back under control without puking. Maybe they really should have started off with food after all. “Seriously?”

“What?” Leah looks at him like he’s sprouted an extra head. If his eyes weren’t watering so badly, he’d probably smack her. “Oh, _monk_. No, silly. I meant, they think he’s celibate. At least, that’s what I read in the gossip rags and online. So take that for what it’s worth.” She shrugs. “I suppose this is crazy talk, but maybe you should just ask him?”

Right, like that’s going to happen. Loki makes a frustrated noise. “Hey, sure. Why not? It’s not like everyone doesn’t already know I’m that desperate.”

“No, no.” Leah rolls her eyes again. She looks like she’s almost ready to slap him, too. Which wouldn’t be a great idea just now, not when he’s already feeling queasy. “You two should talk. I saw the way you looked at each other. There’s still something there. For real. And that’s true whether or not you’re brave enough to admit it.”

Brave enough or not, he’s certainly not _drunk_ enough for this conversation. “Look,” he reminds her, “it was just one set of pictures. For all we know he’s not even going to _like_ them. We may never even hear from him and his stupid-ass company again.” Just the thought of that makes him want to cry; all the more reason to stomp all over it. “So stop marrying us off already. It was a stupid kids’ thing that went wrong half a lifetime ago. Just leave it be already.”

She eyes him for a moment. He glares at her defiantly, daring her to come to her own defense. “If you were wrong,” she says, “would you want me to tell you? Or are you happy there in your sad little mental prison?”

“Why would you even ask me that?” Sometimes Loki thinks he won’t be happy while there’s even one single other soul still living.

“Because,” Leah says, not looking nearly as put-out as she probably ought to, “believe it or not I actually don’t want to hurt you-.”

“Thank _gods_ ,” Loki snaps. He’s made a lifetime’s habit of attacking in order to hide his own feelings, and doing so comes more easily to him than anything else. He bares his teeth at her. “Because I sure would be totally fucked otherwise, wouldn’t I?”

“-although I do sometimes wonder why that is,” Leah goes on, under her breath. She glares at him. “Seriously, I love you to pieces. It’s not one of my smarter choices, I know, but I do. Except none of that matters to you anyway, does it? Okay, fine,” she says, too loudly, when he just keeps on glaring. “If you’re going to be that way about it, I’m not wasting my time trying to be nice. Thor’s already emailed the agency four times over the past week, hoping to connect with you. And how does that line up against your idiotic assumptions, Mr. Know-it-all?”

“You have a lot of fuc- _wait_ ,” Loki says, as what she’s just said finally makes it across the alcohol-filled ocean sloshing away between his ears and his brain. “Thor _what_? When?” He’s too astounded to take the low road and sulk about why it is that nobody’s told him despite how he’s pretty much ordered them not to. That, and the tiny, hopeful child inside him is tugging his sleeve, wide-eyed and pink lipped and open-mouthed: _he wrote about ME?_

To her credit Leah doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t even look particularly cross with him. Loki isn’t sure if that’s because she sees _Baby Loki_ in his expression, or because she doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” she starts, which surprises him a little. It’s what makes the two of them different after all, he supposes. “I didn’t intend to- to just throw it in your face like that. But, yes, Thor has sent an email every other day since we were out at Aes. Early in the afternoon, like clockwork. Evidently he’s the order to your chaos, despite how- uncalculated he seems,” she offers.

She’s not wrong; Loki doesn’t say so.

“He loves the pictures, wants to work with you again,” she recites. “Wants you to know how wonderful it was to see you. Would love coffee and a chance to catch up, but will settle just for knowing you’re safe and well if that’s all you’re willing to let us give him. I kind of wanted to show them to you right away,” she says, shrugging, “but Darcy reminded me that you hate stalkers and would probably appreciate the chance to build a little distance. And if not, it’s just a few days. That’s pretty much nothing in the face of so much persistence.”

She’s right there, too, of course. And for once Loki can’t seem to find his own anger. His mind is ridiculously sluggish under the weight of so much wine. He tries and fails to stifle a yawn, and this time Leah does laugh. “I should tuck you into bed and head home,” she says, “before you conk out here and hate me for a month for leaving you to sleep on your sofa.”

“You shouldn’t drive,” he says, unexpectedly channeling his long-dead mother and wondering why Farbauti’s chosen this precise moment to make an appearance. It’s too much to work out. He hiccups.

“I’ll take a cab,” she promises. “Go wash your face and brush your teeth. I’ll pick up after us.”

Loki can hear the faint clinking of dishes in the kitchen as he struggles valiantly with the toothpaste. Halfway through brushing he’s violently dizzy and has to sit down.

~

“Do us both a favor and drink this,” Leah says, saluting him from his bedside with a gigantic hard plastic tumbler full of water. It’s one of the glasses he got for his patio; the prettiest pale blue, and exceptionally nice, but virtually unbreakable and safe to use outside. He squints at it. It’s not something he’d thought could be used to deliver torture. “And stop being a drama queen about it,” Leah orders, laughing anew. Loki wonders how much of his thoughts he’s accidentally let spill out of his pie hole. He clamps his lips together. “Loki,” she complains, “it’s water. I’m not trying to poison you. Just drink it. You didn’t have any dinner at all… without this you’re going to wish you were dead in the morning.”

He gives up and takes the glass. A little sloshes out onto his hands. It trickles down his wrists in chilly ribbons. He shivers. “Drink,” Leah says again.

Loki does.

“Send me the emails,” he croaks, just before Leah heads out into the hallway with empty glass in hand. “I’ll deal with them.” His eyes are closed before she’s even shut out the lights. The last thing he thinks as he drifts off to sleep is _we’re both shitfaced… she’ll never remember_.

~

He’s wrong.

Nauseated and achy and wrong.

Loki checks his phone around noon, when he can finally stomach even a little light again (and how much wine did they actually drink, really, because he shouldn’t be this fucking hung-over). There they are: four emails, just like Leah’d promised.

Not from an Aes Fleece and Cloth address, either. No, these are from Thor’s personal account. Loki should probably feel flattered. He doesn’t. He feels (grouchy and sick and) annoyed that Thor would share something so personal with the agency staff; that Thor would be so free with something so private.

“That’s dumb,” he reminds himself, very softly. Even his own whispers set his ears ringing. “It’s just email.” He gives up and shuts his eyes.

~

About 3:00 PM, prompted in part by a text from Leah asking him to let her know when he was back among the living because she’d like to be reunited with her car someday, Loki actually reads through Thor’s four messages.

Most of it is standard thank you note fare, proper and polite and only minimally heartfelt. One line in the fourth one catches his eye, though. And sure enough it reels him in.

 _If Monsieur D’Argent would prefer to limit all contact to our working sessions_ , it reads, and Loki’s poor unhappy heart skips a little, _I will of course respect his wishes. But I hope that’s not the case, because I would so love to treat him to a cup of hot chocolate_.

Oh, Thor.

The right answer is slow in coming to him. Loki starts off fully intending to give Thor a well-deserved icy brush-off but as the afternoon wears on into early evening he finds his resolve slowly weakening.

It’s well after dinnertime when (he’s finally able to even look at food, even just toast and a small bowl of applesauce, and) Loki finally hits Send. By this point, he knows every word of his tiny little response by heart:

 _You don’t have to call me that. And I’d love some hot chocolate. But please don’t make me come to Sem_.

Silver tongue, leaden fingers.

When Leah stops in briefly to pick up her car keys and asks what he’s been up to, Loki just shrugs. “Resting,” he tells her. “Catching up on my beauty sleep.”

She laughs. “Fair enough. And after last night, let’s just say you need it.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has questions. Some people want answers.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Agreeing on a little get-together turns out to be nothing more than the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Before long the ensuing missed opportunities and crossed signals - Loki catches a cold and is simply too gross to be seen in public; Thor is the only one still at his desk after 5:00 PM and is consequently left to deal with a broken pipe at the Aes offices; Loki swears they agreed on 3:00 PM and leaves the trendy coffee shop he’d chosen, very, very huffy about having been stood up _given the circumstances_ , around 3:30... only to accidentally stand Thor (who takes it all in stride far more graciously, which is fortunate, especially considering how the actual error does turn out to be Loki’s) up at 4:00 PM instead; Loki is prepping for a shoot in two days and Nat simply won’t hear of him polluting his temple; Loki has a few days off but Thor is at a trade show in Stockholm - reach the point of absurdity.

The whole thing would probably be hilarious if it weren't so fucking depressing.

Or if it was happening to someone else. Taken in aggregate it would make a great movie. Real life is never like the movies, though. "Maybe this just isn't meant to be," Loki complains to Leah after several weeks of disastrous planning. He hadn’t been entirely certain what he wanted from the (second) beginning to start with and, as his memory of the shoot fades out of freshness, the whole idea of reconnecting seems more and more ludicrous.

"Don't be an idiot," she tells him. "You don't get to start selectively believing in fate just so you can pander to your own personal anxiety."

He snaps and huffs and demands that she leave. Deep inside, though, they both know this sort of sanity checking is precisely what he keeps her around for.

~

By the time Loki and Thor are actually able to set something up and stick with it, the days have turned short and with that the weather dreary. The two of them triple-confirm, even managing to laugh about it a little. Loki obsessively rechecks the time (and doesn’t laugh about that at all). He hasn’t been able to go back to the place where they’d missed one another, not even alone – and he’s told Leah several times that he thinks that’s a bad sign… only to get another dose of her fate lecture – so for this attempt he’s opted to let Thor choose the venue.

Thor’s suggested café is in a part of town Loki doesn't know as well as he probably should, judging from the artsy little boutiques and interesting buildings. Here and there the scenery is storybook pretty. And walkable, too; even with some unhurried, inescapable window-shopping (those lovely, lovely boots would be stunning with the soft leather leggings he's wearing - not that the ones on his feet presently aren't, but you can never have too many pairs of exceptional boots - and the quality looks so good that he promises himself he’ll stop in and try them on his way back to the bus no matter how well or how badly this little get-together goes), he finds the place faster than expected.

The day is a bleak, chilly one, but Loki’s come prepared for time outdoors. He’s wrapped himself in his quickly-becoming-beloved smoky grey Aes tunic, over a skimpy little dark grey tank to keep the leggings from forming an unflattering dark cut-yourself in half – line across the pale skin of his waistline, and his favorite dark charcoal puffer. The one with the delicious faux fur-framed hood, because it looks amazing but won't run up against Thor's soft spot for animals. Chunky boots. Delicate black cashmere fingerless gloves.

Nat has a pair of the gloves. She swears by them. He’d half-expected her to be pissed the day he showed up in his own. She's not. If anything, she seems pleased that Loki's copied her.

His nails are short and the exact same color as his tunic. No bling, no sparkle. He and Thor don't really know each other anymore, and the Thor from years ago had simple tastes. With some people there's gay and then there's just way, way too much, and Loki doesn't want to risk it.

There isn't anywhere to sit nearby; this time of year, the outdoor tables that would normally dot the sidewalks are safely stowed, and the waterfront is windy and unappealing. Loki leans up against one side of the building, hands tucked away cozily in his jacket pockets, and watches a squirrel exploring one of the trees nearby. His mind wanders as he looks up and down the block. Squirrels or no it can't be very pleasant being an urban tree, surrounded by stone and metal and pavement with cars and people all around.

Loki feels a bit that way himself sometimes. Right now he’s trying his hardest not to feel _anything_.

Thor startles him out of his musing, all apologetic despite the fact that it's only 4:02 PM. Loki struggles to drag his uncooperative brain back to reality. They hug, briefly. Thor smells like the outdoors. The rural outdoors, that is; not the way it is here in town. Something in it would call to Loki if he let it. He doesn’t. Instead he’s the first to pull away.

They make their way slowly around to the coffee shop doorway. Things get off to a mildly awkward start. Thor can't stop apologizing. Or talking at all, for that matter. He's sorry, so very, very sorry. He's kept Loki waiting. He didn’t mean to be rude. Loki must be frozen, that's a great jacket, on and on. He's visibly nervous. Loki can't quite decide if all the chatter is sweet or annoying.

At the café door they turn by old habit and face one another. Loki looks at Thor, really looks at him, for the first time. He’s wearing a deep red wool coat that’s as full of life as Loki’s own wintery grey-black getup… isn’t. The rich color sets off his eyes. After all this time they're still the same unnaturally bright blue that Loki remembers. The face around them is older now, a bit worn but kind. It would be far too easy to get los-.

"Mm? I'm sorry. I didn't catch that last bit of what you were saying." Loki can feel his own face flush. He hopes the cold is enough to explain it, to cover his embarrassment at being caught out- gawking.

"We should go inside," Thor suggests, a bit too gently. Repeats, probably. Not that Loki would know. "Get out of this wind, grab some hot chocolate. Warm up a little."

They do.

It's a nice place, busy on a gloomy afternoon. Spacewise it’s on the small side, but almost every booth and table is tucked away into its own noon and that affords patrons a reasonable amount of privacy. The two of them stop at the counter, where Thor lets Loki order first and then asks for a plate of cookies and a plate of fruit to go along with their cocoa.

Once they’ve picked up their order, Loki follows along behind as Thor picks out a cozy mini-booth for the two of them. They set their drinks and snacks on the table, shed their coats and gloves, and settle in. Or try to, anyway. What actually happens is this: between sips Thor starts right back in on the nervous small talk. And Loki doesn’t seem to be capable of anything better.

It's nerve-wracking, finally being this close to Thor again and not knowing how to handle it. None of this is what he expected, somehow. Loki feels a bit like he might scream. Or cry, which would probably be worse. Emotions are overrated.

Thor, evidently less impeded, is unabashedly excited about Loki's choice of tops. "You look great," Thor gushes. "I always knew you would grow into yourself and be- stunning.” He stops; Loki watches the color drain from his face. “At least, I knew you _would have_." Thor stops again, a little longer this time, his beautiful eyes abruptly wet: "I'm- I’m sorry. I keep saying that, I know. This- I guess this is taking a lot of getting used to."

"It's okay," Loki says, which isn't at all how he's feeling. "It's been a long time. We're different people now." He coughs into the crook of an elbow to hide the way his own eyes are threatening to leak and how badly he needs to clear his throat. "I guess we can't expect to just waltz back in like nothing's changed." Because it has. By _it_ , he means _everything_.

"I actually kind of have, though," Thor admits. "And you know what? That really scares me."

Loki bristles. "Yeah, of course it does. I'm a fucking monster," he snaps. He kind of is. Which is why he's single, and has no friends beyond Leah. And she’s actually paid to put up with him. "See the pretty monster in its cage,” he mocks (himself). “Look to your heart’s content, then go."

Thor jerks like Loki's slapped him. "No! That isn't what I meant at all. I don’t think that! I just- I have a lot of questions." He dabs at his eyes with his napkin. "And I'm afraid of what might happen if I ask them."

"Oh," Loki says. He feels bad for jumping to conclusions, but he's also still feeling prickly. On top of which it’s hard to know if Thor is really being honest. Loki knows he was the only good liar out of the two of them as children, but time- changes people. He nibbles the very edge of a cookie, mostly for something to do (besides look at Thor’s sad face). "Maybe start with an easy one?"

"We can take turns," Thor suggests, brightening a little. "I mean, you must have some of your own, no?"

Loki shrugs, and the tunic slips off one shoulder. He thinks about tugging it back up where it belongs but opts not to. "Sure," he says. "Maybe."

"Uh, okay. Yeah." Thor smiles a wan smile that would look more at home on Loki, who wonders when Thor even developed the capacity to look so sad and then stops himself from asking just in time. Because, yeah, graceless and stupid. "Um, did you go to New York to become a model? Because I didn't- you never mentioned wanting to be one. Not that it wasn't a smart choice," Thor hurries on without really giving Loki a chance to answer. "Because fucking hell, just look at you."

Ugh. So much for starting with something _easy_. Then again, maybe for Thor it is. "No," Loki starts. "I went to New York to get" - _away from you_ isn't true, really, and it's not the right sort of lie for a cute little coffee shop - "out of Europe, I suppose. After I’d been there a short while I was literally discovered on the street," he adds, to forestall any awkward questions about what he _had_ been doing. "Just like in the movies."

"Neat!" Thor smiles, eyes and all this time. He takes a sip of his cocoa, then gestures _go on_ with the cup. "Next? It’s your turn."

"I dunno." Loki looks away. "All of my questions are hard ones."

Thor nods amicably enough, although his shoulders tense slightly. Loki can see the big muscles roll under his shirt. "That's okay," he says. "Go for it."

Loki snorts. "We might need to be drunk for that," he says, meaning his questions but flushing anew when what he's actually said hits him. Whoops. Thor doesn’t react, though. Evidently only one of them is still a pervert. "Fine. Remember, though,” he warns, “you asked for it. Why did you really abandon me in Paris?"

"Hm. You were right." Thor pushes his cookie around on his delicate glass plate. "My mom was fine with it but my dad- really wasn't. I think they thought time and distance would cure me and, when it didn’t, my parents fought about what to do all term. And when he wasn’t able to win on logic alone my father basically just laid down an edict and wouldn't hear otherwise." Loki watches Thor’s face closely for any sign he might by lying.

He comes up empty. "And why didn't you want me to come home that summer?"

Thor smirks. "No cheating. That's two questions. It's my turn."

Loki frowns. "I don't like this game," he grumbles.

Thor gives him a funny look. "It isn't one. Were you happy in New York?"

"Not right away," Loki says, trying not to let his mind go there. He already feels surprisingly raw as his mental scabs– things he thought were long since healed – are peeled away. “But I made it work. I forced myself to give it time, and things got better."

"Good," Thor says. "I’ve worried about that, ever since the photo shoot. Ever since I learned who you really were.” It makes sense; Lang’s life had started in Paris, one huge city after another, but Thor knows the truth about Loki. “It's such a big, loud place. I'm not sure I could ever really feel at home there."

 _I didn't_ , Loki thinks. Hence why he's even back in Norway at all. "You have to find the human scale," he explains. "It's not bad once you do that."

"Like the Village," Thor says, nodding. He hums to himself. "Still, not me, I don't think."

"Yeah, not really me either," Loki blurts out without really thinking. He hadn't intended to give quite so freely of himself, so quickly. "I would ask 'why the farm',” he adds, to distract Thor from what he’d just admitted, “but that's stupid. It’s all you ever wanted."

"Not all," Thor counters. "And not ever. I actually thought long and hard about leaving, after you di- you left. I wanted to go to boarding school and put it all behind me. Given the circumstances my parents might even have let me do it, too. And then I thought about leaving Norway again when I graduated University. But in the end I just couldn't do it, I guess. The sheep and their lives are part of me. I couldn't abandon them," _like you abandoned me_ , he doesn't say.

That’s okay; Loki hears it anyway.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clearing the air is good, no?

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Over the course of what turns out to be a very long hot chocolate date, so long that it spills out of the coffee shop (when the two of them mutually agree they need protein for dinner, rather than just a little fat swimming in an endless sea of sugar) and carries on at an equally quiet, homey nearby pub, Loki learns a great deal. And out of what he learns, far more than he expected is, well, surprising. Thor is doubtless caught off-guard as well.

But this is all new to Loki, whereas Thor has had quite some time now to adjust to it. Or whatever. At any rate, Thor certainly seems to take it in stride better.

Perhaps more than anything, Loki learns that as a grown man Thor is both steadfastly honest and unshakably kind. When Loki asks if he regrets all the money he's sunk into his charity, under what have since turned out to be false pretenses, Thor smiles. When he responds, his voice is soft and sweet. "No, not at all. Never. Because at least once every month or so someone writes to our foundation - a parent, a teen, a counselor, a friend - to thank us, to thank me personally, for making a difference. 'I/my friend/my client/my son was ready to end it all it,' they tell me, ‘but just in time we stumbled across this website. And things still aren't easy, but life is getting better every day.' Or they – parents, siblings, lovers, friends - donate after a loss of their own, seeking to make sense out of someone's death by using it as a catalyst to help others. Just like I once did." He sips his beer, a dark craft bokkol (local, of course) that Loki’s never heard of, then blots his mouth neatly. Even in this dimly-lit booth his lips are warmly pink and soft looking. "I'm always going to be grateful for that, for the chance to make a difference. And when I found out you were still alive... well, that's even better."

It seems that Thor doesn't hold grudges, any more than he did as a child. "Sure, at the time I went through pretty much the whole range of human emotion," he admits, "if you want to go out on a limb and call what teenagers feel _human_. It wasn’t easy and it sure as hell wasn’t pretty. But that was years ago. Life is short. I'm not going to waste time now being upset about it."

"Not even a little?" It has to be too good to be true. Loki knows it, all the way to his marrow. He can’t be getting off this easy. There's no way Thor isn't lying.

Except rather than trying to hide it, Thor admits his small sin readily. "Okay, yeah." One corner of his mouth quirks up. It makes him look- older. Tired, and - incongruously - a little naughtier. Or maybe it’s Loki’s own beer that’s doing that last part. "The night after the shoot, when you’d come out to Sem and stood there before me all flesh and blood… when I’d held you in my arms and touched you with my mouth… my head was all over the place. I was right back in love, almost like I'd never left, but a small part of me kind of wanted to strangle you. You put me through so much, you bastard," he says, and Loki flinches. "But then it hit me: I must have put you through something, too, or none of it would have happened. And you were all alone at school, and then even more alone on a whole new continent." Thor's eyes are bright. "By the time my single malt and I were done thinking for the evening, there I was bawling my eyes out over all you'd suffered. Even though I didn't know what it even was. I can't help it, Lo," he says, angling his head and sighing. "I'm a terrible sap. Whatever I try to pretend to the contrary, it's just that... pretending. You've got me. You always have. I don’t think there’s any way to change it."

~

Loki’s penultimate question, which probably really isn't important at all but still somehow manages to seem so, answers itself. "Do you remember- well, it would have been the last time we talked, I guess, even though we mostly didn't?" Thor brings the whole thing up a little sheepishly, as though there's no chance Loki will recall the event in question. "Sif” – Loki stiffens reflexively at the sound of her name, but Thor doesn’t go where Loki’s expecting – “was so pissed at me afterwards. All she'd asked for was ten short minutes of my undivided attention, to get my advice on one of those ridiculous Boyfriend Problems" - he sets his beer aside, huffing when it sloshes a little, and makes air quotes with both hands - "that seem soooo important when you're young. This was before she admitted to herself that she actually liked girls better. And then I managed to make it all about you anyway. When we got the news that you'd died, I thought she was going to kill me. She laid right off the threats," he leans in and tells Loki conspiratorially, fingers warm on Loki’s wrist, "when she caught on to how I kind of wanted her to end me. Because what I wanted right then was to be with you, at any cost. But she didn't speak to me for months afterwards."

"I bet." Loki smiles to hide the way his heart is lying out there between them on the table, bleeding. "I would have done the same." What Thor’s just admitted… it’s way too much to think about right now, the way his whole life has been a lie. He just can't.

"You kind of did," Thor reminds him. "Except you did her way, way better."

~

The heavy stuff gets to be too much. Instead, they talk about the dinner menu for a while. Loki suspects Thor will defer politely and let him once again order first, so he feels compelled to tease out whether or not his date’s gone vegetarian. Loki himself isn't, of course, but he doesn't want to be a boor. Not when things are- raw. Raw and new and oh, so delicate. Wounds, barely covered by freshly healing skin.

He needs to be really, really careful.

Thor, as it turns out, is still pretty much omnivorous. He _is_ concerned about sustainability and humane animal agriculture - from the impassioned way he speaks about the subject it's clearly real and important to him, not just something he's learned helps sell Aes' products - but he's chosen this pub with that in mind and he obviously wants them to both feel good about it.

Loki thinks he does. Feel good, that is. He orders a rich fish stew and smiles when Thor asks his permission before copying him. "What if I'd said no," he teases once the young man - barely more than a boy - waiting on them has taken their order and headed back to the kitchen.

"Then I would have ordered something else," Thor says, "and stolen yours when you weren't looking."

~

Even with the stew, which is salty-sweet and tender and absolutely delicious, Loki's really starting to feel that second pint. Which, of course, has not stopped him from making a respectable dent in his third one. "So, what, you never settled down with anyone?" He reaches out and touches - just briefly, as Thor brings spoon to mouth - Thor's ring finger. "Hmm. You didn’t really strike me as the consummate bachelor." It's a dumb thing to say and Loki knows it. He and Thor had been barely more than kids when they'd parted, not yet on their way to _consummate anythinghood_. Still, in his sad little daydreams he has always pictured Thor happily married. Long since settled into one of the family farmhouses, with someone else if not Sif. He'd actually been shocked to see no mention of Thor’s own family on Aes' website.

"I tried for a while," Thor confesses. "Dated people whenever I could make myself, even let it get serious with a few of them. But- in the end I couldn't do it. It wasn't fair to them; it wasn't fair to me. It was never going to work. After a while I just stopped trying."

Loki gives himself a couple of seconds to think about whether or not he can stand to ponder what that might mean.

No, he decides, it hurts too much. He quickly opts against it.

"What about you, then?" Thor touches Loki's hand in turn. "All those hopelessly hot New York models, and you’re still single?"

"Yeah, no," Loki scoffs. "I had zero interest in people who ate less -and backstabbed more - than I did." He carefully makes a joke of it, even waiting until he's sure Thor's laughing, so what follows will seem like more of the same. "I was always more into the big blond guys. And there were plenty of those in New York. It would have been fine… except for how they were always wrong somehow."

Thor abruptly sobers. _Shit_ , Loki thinks _Nice misstep, genius_.

But, no: "That must have been so lonely," Thor says sadly. "At least I had Tonsberg around me. You, though... you were really all alone. Even with all those people."

"Modeling is a pretty high-maintenance lifestyle." Loki quickly composes himself and shrugs, shifting into _work mode_ and projecting casual indifference. "No one wants to date someone who has a workout plan and a drinking plan and a diet and a sleep schedule and a whole lot of minders to make fucking sure he sticks to every last bit of it. There's not much glamour in being glamorous, not when you get right down to the reality of it. You can't club all night and not look like shit in the morning."

"Oh, crap, sorry," Thor says, digging out his phone and looking wide-eyed at the time. "I didn't even think of that. I certainly didn’t mean to get you in trouble."

"You didn't. You haven't," Loki assures him. "That’s not what I meant. It’s fine… I have a few days off in between things. No one but Leah's going to get on me about this one."

"Whew!" Thor looks almost comically relieved and Loki glances down at his spoon to hide his own grin. "Leah; the woman from the shoot."

"Right." Loki chases his last spoonful of stew with a big mouthful of beer. "She's my handler," he clarifies, except that feels mean. "And my friend, I guess. She looks out for me."

Thor smiles one of his finest sweet, utterly genuine smiles and tells Loki how glad he is; everyone needs someone.

~

Once they finally make their way outside Loki's as quick as he can be to protest that he doesn't need an escort back to his bus stop. That's partly because he's embarrassingly unsteady on his feet, now that he's up and moving, and partly because he's not sure what he wants. All he knows is that he _doesn't_ want things to get awkward. He needs to go back to his apartment and sleep this all off and process his thoughts and feelings first… but only _after_ he's done working through the inevitable hangover.

It's no bother, Thor assures Loki; his own bus stop is only just around the corner.

"Seriously? You took the _bus_ all the way here? From _Sem_?"

"From the train station," Thor corrects, laughing. "Have a little faith in me, maybe?"

~

All the way to his bus stop, Loki (concentrates first and foremost on walking like he's not drunk, sure, but also) worries that Thor's going to want to come home with him. He’s not ready for that, not yet, and he isn’t sure that he’ll ever be. And even if he is at some point, he’s made enough drunken, stupid mistakes in his lifetime to know that starting with a clear head is pretty fucking essential.

Once they’ve actually reached the bus stop, though, and Thor's kissed Loki a very, very thorough goodbye, it's all Loki can do not to beg him.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moving forward, maybe.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Leah helps herself to another sizable heap of- well, it’s flat rice noodles with matchstick vegetables and Thai basil. The dish has a name, but it's (delicious, yes, but still) straight from the fakest fake Thai place Loki's ever seen so he's reasonably sure whatever they’ve called it is made-up anyway. Not that he's been to Thailand, true. His look never was a big seller there, not even when he'd been young and filthy. "He seems pretty interested," Leah says, gesturing with Loki's phone. "Are you going to date him?"

Ugh. For starters, Loki can barely remember the last time he _dated_. Which may be because he- hasn’t; he's not quite sure anything in his life even qualifies. All he and Thor had ever done (besides being the best friends ever) was hang out on the farm and fuck each other senseless (and then break each other's hearts so violently the blast had strewn shrapnel across an ocean and two continents). They certainly hadn’t gone on a single date. There hadn't been much teen-focused nightlife in the hills outside of Sem, not back in those days, and the two of them hadn’t really been all that _out_ in public anyway. Odin had been disgusted enough with they way they’d conducted themselves in relative private.

In New York some of the tradesmen had probably considered what they were doing with Loki _dating_. In his own mind, though, it hadn’t been that at all; he personally lumps the whole business under _fucking for food (or a nice, warm bed)_... which is something altogether different.

So, yeah, no. He’s never been a dater. And these days he only goes out with Leah occasionally, or with Darcy. Between them they turn down all comers. Or at least they're supposed to.

"Give me that!" Loki lunges across the coffee table to grab for his phone, huffing and snapping despite how he'd actually been the one who’d asked her to read Thor's texts and then share her opinion. "Don’t read my stuff. And probably not. No. I don’t think I’m cut out for dating."

She groans. Leah’s brave when she knows he can’t quite reach her. "Too bad. He seems nice. And hot. And smitten.” She sighs. “Maybe you two can be friends, then?"

"Hm, maybe." Loki scrolls through Thor's messages, a few sent every couple of days since they'd gotten together. Nothing pushy, but Leah's right... the interest is clearly there. "I'm not sure I even feel attracted to him," he lies - he's actually jerked off to the memory of that sloppy bus stop kiss every single fucking time he's stepped into the shower - "these days. Not anymore. We were just kids then, you know? Now we’ve grown up and- and everything's different."

Leah rinses down a mouthful of noodles with a swig of beer. They're just back from a quick shoot across town; now Loki has five days off, maybe more. It's plenty of time to work off a night of salty food and alcohol. "Well, if you're not interested," she says casually, "do you mind if I have a go at him?"

Loki's heart leaps into his throat. "You'd better fucking not," he threatens. It takes him way too long to realize that she's laughing at him. That he’s just been played. "Asshole."

"Not interested, not attracted. Right. You keep telling yourself that, kiddo." She gives him the kind of smug look he's hit people over. "I've known you a long time now. Don't mistake me for someone you can mindlessly lie to. Not and get away with it, anyway."

"Fine." Loki slams his beer down on the table. Well, on the coaster. He's picked up some class over the years, along with all this cynicism and heartache. "I like him. A lot. Like I used to, probably. But so much has happened. I'm fine alone. I don't want to hurt anymore." Loki stuffs his mouth full of broccoli to keep the rest of his deepest, darkest secrets from pouring out of it. "Anh ih oo ehw ahyuh ah ih hiw oo," he warns her. He will, too. Okay, maybe he won't _kill_ her. But he’ll certainly find a way to make her sorry.

"Mm, sure you will." Leah looks about as far from terrified as anyone could. "You'd be lost without me," she reminds him. "I know you wouldn't dare hurt me, even."

Over the years, Loki knows, he's probably hurt her plenty. But when it comes down to chewing versus admitting that to her, it’s chewing that's looking a whole lot more appealing.

~

Loki jumps when his phone rings. Everyone texts these days, even Darcy. And Thor. Pretty much no one ever calls him.

"Hi, it's Thor."

"Oh," Loki says flatly. He’s so startled he hadn’t even looked to see who was calling. His head is spinning. "Uh, hi."

"If I've got my days right," Thor goes on, brightly, as though Loki's less-than-thrilled reception has sailed right past him, "and your schedule hasn’t changed, you have a few days off this week. I was hoping you might like to get together for dinner."

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Loki's wanted this so badly... and consistently talked himself straight back out of it, every single time. "I don't know," he says. "Do you really think that's wise?" He clenches his right fist until his fingernails just start to break the skin, hoping the sting will distract him enough to let him get through this. "After all, you're a _client_." Hot tears well up as his body betrays him; he bats them away angrily. Getting together would be building something. Loki doesn't build; he destroys.

"Oh," Thor says softly. He doesn't sound quite so bright and cheery anymore. Loki is all at once smugly pleased and shattered. "I didn't think- I- is that a problem?"

What it is, of course, is a smoke screen. Once upon a time, long ago, it certainly would have been an issue. Back when Loki was a new model, an unknown quantity to be treated accordingly. These days he makes his own rules and his agency works around them. He's so tense, his jaw hurts. "I suppose not," he admits. Backing down somehow manages to both be a relief and horribly emotionally painful.

"Oh, good," Thor says. Loki can hear it in his voice; he’s grinning that big, crooked grin that ought to be slapped right off him. "In that case, why don't we try it?"

Loki could just say yes. It would be so easy. But his brain isn't done screwing things up, not for either of them. "So you think Old Man Borson won't mind you playing with the hired looks this time?" He winces as he says it. It's a cheap shot, after all; one that's not worthy of the two of them.

"We were kids, Lo," Thor says, with just a touch of exasperation. So, there's still a blunt weapon hidden under that shiny veneer of endless patience. "That was a lifetime ago. My father no longer makes my choices for me."

Thor stops there. Loki waits for the "look, if you don't want to do this, just say so," but it doesn't come.

"Yeah, I suppose he doesn't" Loki finally admits. "That was rude of me." He hopes Thor can hear his unspoken "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Thor says after a long pause and an equally long sigh. "It was a shitty, shitty thing. I get that."

Loki takes a deep breath and swallows hard. "Yeah," he says again. His snark has deserted him. "I actually would like to see you for dinner."

After everything, he's more than a little surprised when Thor still agrees. Yes, he knows he shouldn’t be.

~

The weather, if not exactly pleasant, is certainly tolerable. When Thor mentions being in Oslo for the day and offers to let him pick the restaurant this time, Loki suggests a good place within easy walking distance of the apartment. He isn't sure if it's for escaping or seducing. Both, maybe.

"I'm a little on the casual side today," Thor tells him. "Business casual, I mean, not sheep casual." They share a quick laugh. It feels- nice, actually. Almost too nice. "Will that work?"

"You'll be fine," Loki assures him. Because while Thor could arrive at the Royal Palace in a speedo and still readily gain entry, in this case the restaurant he's chosen leans more towards cozy than showy. "The simple fact that I'm a model doesn't mean I'm high-maintenance."

"Of course not," Thor says. Loki isn't sure if there's a little dig lurking in there somewhere. He lets it go regardless. After all, if there was, it’s not like he wouldn’t deserve it.

"Good," he tells Thor. "I'll get us a reservation." After all, that’s why he has _people_. "Meet you there at 8:00?" It's a little on the late side, maybe, but he'd rather hit the place when it's less crowded. Plus, he needs a few hours to get all the _freaking out_ out of his system. He doesn't offer to go earlier.

"Perfect," Thor says, sounding honestly excited. "Well, then, I'll see you later."

~

"I die," Loki all but yells into the phone. "Fucking hell, Leah… what was I thinking?"

"You do realize nobody talks like that in real life, right? 'I die'," Leah mocks, laughing gently. "What are we, twelve?"

He snorts. He can feel the miserable knot of tension under his sternum easing. "You’re a fine one to talk, you know. No one says anything like _that_ , either."

~

It’s the nature of the modeling business. At least, he can blame it on that if he has to. Loki spends a lot of time deciding on a look and then quite a bit more time getting it exactly right. It’s going to be a damp night, stuck somewhere halfway between raining and snowing. He showers and takes the extra time to do his hair curly. All the moisture in the air will wreck a sleek, smooth look anyway; he might as well let his hair do its thing and then own it. The right shampoo, the right product, the right giant block of his life he’s not ever getting back… and he’s got a lovely mop of big fat shiny, touchable curls. Just in case anyone feels like touching them.

It’s always hard to eat and drink with his hair fucking everywhere, though. In the end he settles on a soft updo with lots of loose ringlets. If the evening turns into more than just dinner, he can let the whole thing down in an irresistible cascade of dark waves.

Perfect.

A little mascara, because all these years spent in front of the camera have left him well aware of how the dramatic black sweep of lashes over his pale cheeks is one of his most appealing features. Nothing else makeup-wise, though. Loki’s twink days are long since behind him, and Thor (always was, and still) seems like a guy who prefers things a little more natural. Because although Loki isn’t the least bit sure what he’s after, he does know he needs Thor to want him.

He’s careful not to overdo things with the tunic. There’s _I love this_ and then there’s _I have a problem_ , and he certainly doesn’t need to advertise the latter. Instead Loki goes with a cozy green top with a wide boatneck and the kind of slouchy sleeves that look great pushed up his wiry forearms. He finishes off the outfit with a nice scarf, so he doesn’t freeze to death in the name of looking cute. Jeans so worn he can practically read through them, cut to fit perfectly enough that it’s almost like they were made just for him. On his feet, those amazing boots (he’d been so busy talking with Thor that he’d completely forgotten to look at the night of the coffee shop/pub, and had ended up having to make a special trip back for). Perfect.

Loki spins around slowly, carefully inspecting himself in the long mirrors just outside his closet. He wants to look great, but not like he’s trying too hard.

Except for the mildly panicky look on his face, he knows he’s nailed it.

~

“This is a nice place!” Thor looks around as he shakes out of his coat. If he’s nervous too, he doesn’t show it. “I like it already.”

_I love living right around the corner from it_ , Loki only just catches himself in time and doesn’t say. “Mm,” he hums instead, because that’s much safer. He needs to let the evening unwind slowly. Thor may (okay, does) look good enough to eat, but they’re here for dinner. And conversation. And to find out if they can spend time together more than once without wanting to kill each other. That’s more important than rushing home and tumbling straight into bed, regardless of his dick’s opinion on the matter. He’s old enough to know that his dick is a shitty decision-maker.

They order drinks and appetizers, and Loki forces himself to take his time. To chew his food, to sip his drink. To watch his own mouth, and to really listen when Thor is talking.

By the time their main course arrives, a simple array of small, hot sandwiches with roast winter vegetables, they’re holding hands on the tabletop and taking turns feeding one another. They can’t help falling right back into- things. Into whatever you want to call what they’d shared before. It’s lovely. It’s horrifying.

“A lot has changed, I know,” Thor tells him. “But I like you just as much as I always have. I’d really like to try again. But only if you- feel the same?” Thor looks away, blushing. “I don’t want to force you. Shit. I know what I want to say, but I can’t seem to figure out how to put it.”

Falling right back in feels too easy. Loki doesn’t do easy. “Only _like_?” He frowns. He’s not sure what he wants to hear and even less sure why he’s pushing. Because it’s his nature to be difficult, probably. He fights everything, even the things most dear to him. It’s the only way he knows. “That doesn’t seem like a very solid foundation.”

He needs to be sure, after everything, that he can’t readily push too far.

Thor clears his throat. “Do you want the truth? Really? Are you sure? Because I- I don’t know. I feel like I still need to be careful.”

Loki can’t speak past the lump in his throat. Yes, yes, yes, and yes again. He settles for simply nodding.

“I love you,” Thor says. “I fucking adore you. I always have and I always will. You’re a part of me, and I need you like breathing. When I found out you were still alive- I can’t even put words to the way I felt.” He shudders. “It’s like every single pitiful, hopeless dream I’d ever had came true.” His attempt at a laugh sounds more like choking. “So, uh, yeah. Is that solid enough for you?”

What it is, when you get right down to the bottom of it, is terrifying… in all sorts of ways. _You’re an asshole_ , Loki reminds himself. _You don’t deserve this_. He looks down at his plate and shrugs. “Maybe.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki finds it in him to do the right thing.
> 
> Eventually.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

"Think about it, then," Thor had told Loki over dinner four weeks ago, after Loki’d been a jerk and things had taken a decidedly chilly turn, "and when you've made up your mind, let me know."

"How long do I have?" Loki'd played with his food and then cowered behind the rim of his glass to hide the welling tears. "To think through everything and make a decision, I mean?"

Even looking away he’d all but felt the weight of Thor's gaze. "I'm not sure it's so much a case of making a decision as it is one of recognizing- of knowing your own mind," Thor'd corrected him. "But whatever you want to call it, it’s all the same to me… you have all the time you need. I've waited almost fifteen years, you know? I'm pretty confident I can make it through another one. Or another ten," Thor'd added with a dry little huff that definitely hadn’t counted as a laugh, "if that's how long it takes you."

Loki's (awful, traitorous) mouth had refused to stop, even then. "And if I decide it's not what I want?"

"Mm." Thor'd thought – or, at least, he’d paused; _Loki_ had certainly been thinking - for a long moment before responding. "Then I'll be really disappointed," he'd said at last, very softly. "But at least you'll still be looking lovely in our clothing."

They'd gone ahead and finished the last of their meal, the only concession to their unpleasantly heavy discussion being that they'd stopped passing bites to one another. And given that they'd both only been a few mouthfuls from done, that much could have all been Loki's imagination.

Afterwards Loki, emotions a hopelessly confused tangle, had accepted Thor's offer (for Thor, no longer a selfish teen, had continued to act the gentleman) of an escort home. It was just a few blocks, barely enough to get Loki's hopes up. But it had, and the truth had _hurt_. "I'd love to," Thor'd admitted when offered a chance to see the apartment, "but I'm going to take a rain check. We've both been drinking and I don't want us to do anything you might regret later."

So much misery. Loki had felt himself drowning. "But I have a rooftop patio," he had- okay, he had _pleaded_. "Even here in town you can see all the stars!"

"...and I'm sure I'll love it," Thor'd said, gently peeling Loki's fingers off one forearm and kissing the back of his hand before returning it - carefully, insistently - to Loki's side, "once you've decided whether we're gazing up at them as friends or as lovers."

"Not both, then?"

Thor'd laughed and shaken his head, ruefully. "You're still quite the stubborn thing, aren't you? Both is fine. Both is perfect. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to head back to my hotel. Have a good night," he'd added quickly, before Loki'd been able to come up with any way to ask to come see it.

_Damn_.

They'd parted with a friendly hug and a brief but still-decidedly-more-than-friendly kiss.

Loki'd gone upstairs and stood out there on his beautiful patio alone until his teeth chattered. Then he'd gone to bed frozen and cried himself to sleep.

~

Since then, he’d been doing a whole lot of thinking.

And stuff.

First, because he’s Loki and he never does anything the conventional way, he’d tried to get Leah to make up his mind for him. That had- well, it had gone even less positively than he had expected. It’d ended so badly, in fact, that he thinks she might have ratted him out to Natasha afterwards because his workouts the past few weeks have been nothing short of brutal.

Natasha had explained it immediately and smoothly: nothing is _going on_ ; it’s just that the next client wants him a bit more on the ripped side. When he'd asked if the client also wanted him shaking head to toe and puking up bile in the sink in the corner, she'd called him Captain Paranoid and then patted his burning shoulder, laughing all the while in a way he'd found anything but reassuring.

After the Leah attempt had left him (the non-seafaring equivalent of) high, dry, and worse off than he’d started, Loki'd given up asking his friends (riiiiight, because he has such a plethora of _those_ to choose from) and moved on to doing a lot - a whole lot, enough that he’d started to question his own sanity - of talking to himself and pacing.

Two weeks ago he’d tried something exceptionally stupid (in retrospect, anyway).

He'd accepted the gracious offer of dinner and drinks from one of the better-looking guys working with the advertising agency next door, in hopes of gaining a better understanding as to whether the problem was Thor specifically or just dating in general. He'd expected not to feel the same kind of connection – no entire lifetime’s worth of personal history between the two of them, after all - and had gone a little overboard in the pre-dinner drinks department in hopes of making up for it. What he hadn't anticipated, though, was the way he’d been struck by such an overpowering sense of _doing something wrong_ that he'd had to excuse himself to the restroom in order to calm down. After fifteen minutes in there, he still wasn’t sure he wouldn’t vomit or cry.

That had been the end of their (very short, and not particularly pleasant) evening. Loki'd picked up the tab, because it wasn't the other guy's fault that he's a fucked-up asshole. They'd hugged goodbye and talked (briefly, politely) about staying in touch. Except his date (if you could even call the man that) hadn't asked for his number... which was good, really, and had saved Loki the awkwardness of having to refuse to provide it.

That night, he'd gone home and leapt straight into the shower. He’d stood under the hot, hot spray for ages, scrubbing at himself violently until his skin had burned and stung.

~

"No luck?" Leah peers at Loki over her magazine. Which, of course, is one of the best-know international titles running the new ads for Aes' knitwear.

"At what?" Loki's tired of playing games, yes. So very tired. Even so, he can't quite seem to stop it.

He looks down. Thor has continued to text regularly, if perhaps not quite so persistently as before. The most recent message, a picture of two of the most contented-looking ewes – Aes’ finest, one white and one brown, both plump with what will be their spring lambs - Loki thinks he's ever seen, is open in front of him on his laptop. "Miss ewe two," he wants very badly to tease. "Cute," he texts back instead. Politely, impersonally.

Doing so hurts; it tears at something deep inside him.

"About Thor," Leah clarifies. Unlike Darcy, she doesn't add the "you idiot" she's bound to be thinking.

"Maybe I have," Loki grumbles. "What makes you so sure I would tell you?"

"Okay," she says. She looks not only skeptical but also smug. "Sure. You have a point there. Except that, for someone who's identified his heart's wish and followed it, let's just say you sure do seem unhappy."

"I _like_ being unhappy," he grouses. "It's good for business."

"Uh huh, sure" she says evenly, looking back down and turning her page. She smoothes the magazine flat across her thighs. "You keep telling yourself that, cutie."

Loki takes a deep breath. The adorable Aes ewes are still smiling up at him. "What if I _have_ made up my mind…” – another breath, and another – “but I'm afraid of his reaction?" He's known his heart all along and his mind only slightly more recently, but the intense panic he feels every time he thinks of reaching out to Thor may well ruin everything anyway. Plus, it's been weeks. All claims to the contrary a hot, gainfully employed man like Thor must know how to move on in the face of potential rejection. The Thors of the world don't beg for scraps like poor stray animals, after all. Like Loki.

Leah marks her place with a finger and closes the magazine. She studies him, frowning. "For someone who's done all the insanely brave things you've done over the years," she tells him, "you certainly can be cowardly."

"I hate you," Loki snaps. Because she’s never been less wrong.

She laughs. "Yeah yeah yeah, I know... after all, you hate everybody."

~

"Hi, this is Loki," Loki points out - unnecessarily, since he's calling Thor's mobile from his own - when Thor answers. On the first ring. Even just the sound of Thor's voice is enough to make his heart pound. "So. Um. I was just wondering... do you have time this week for coffee?" Loki'd rather do drinks and dinner (and bed) but he doesn't want to leave the door open for intent-related questions. He wants to meet in person, where he can make his case properly and also gauge Thor’s reaction.

They settle on Thursday, two days away. Loki will meet Thor near the site of a work-related meeting, at a small coffee house just north of the city. Thor doesn’t sound particularly pleased or excited. Loki plays the short conversation over and over in his head. A hundred times later, he’s still not sure if he's reading too much into it.

~

They’re meeting at 4:00 PM. Loki makes himself sleep until noon. Or, rather, he makes himself stay in bed until he falls back asleep, over and over.

Because he's spent ten hours tossing and turning - and the stupid mop hates him with a fiery passion regardless - Loki's hair is an absolute shitshow. He curses it out in four languages before giving up and having one of the girls at the agency braid him up like the fancier version of a Viking warrior.

As he’s heading back out the door Darcy kids him that he looks like a fairy. He bares his teeth at her but doesn't ask which sort she might be meaning.

~

They grab their drinks and treats. Loki trails after Thor, to a tiny corner table at the back of the restaurant. It’s private enough. Any other day, it might even be romantic.

Thor's (friendly enough… but unusually reserved, and) dressed in a nicely tailored suit. By comparison Loki – who’s sporting what might well be the world's tightest, thinnest t-shirt, in dark, dark grey to hide his panicky sweating... in case Thor shares the mystery client's view on Loki's newly-sculpted physique - knows he looks like nothing so much as an aging rentboy. He thinks briefly about bolting, because maybe he can’t do this after all, but ultimately (wills himself to stay put, and) settles for just tugging his coat back up around his shoulders.

There's no point in even attempting small talk. None. "Um, I- you wanted to know my decision. And I said I would tell you." The very opposite of polished. Loki’s hands are trembling; the rest of his body isn’t far behind them.

Thor nods. He isn't smiling. His hands wrap his mug, knuckles as white as Loki's. “Go ahead,” he says flatly.

"I've decided I love you," Loki blurts out. He's practiced and forgotten an entire speech. Several of them. “More than anything.”

Thor's face pinches up around the eyes. It's not the reaction Loki was (hoping for, or) expecting. "Okay. But?"

_Oh_.

Loki puts on a shaky little smile. "But I want to try this again - to go out with you - anyway. And I hope we can make it go somewhere from there."

Thor chokes on nothing. "You _what_?"

"I fucking miss you," Loki tells him. "I want to be with you. I- I'm terrified." He is. If he dies right here on his stool, within the next sixty seconds, no one will be less surprised than he is.

"Really?" Thor smiles a bit timidly. Two fat tears - one per side, because Thor has never been anything short of perfect - trail down his cheeks. "You mean that?"

Loki can't get more words out. He's been so busy planning what he'll do (to save face and buy himself time, so he can go off and die in private like a wounded animal) when Thor tells him "too bad, because I'm not interested anymore" that he's caught completely unprepared. It’s not even worth trying. Instead he bites his lip and nods.

"Holy shit," Thor says. There’s nothing emotionless about his voice this time. More tears join their brothers, catching the light as they streak his lovely face. "I- I thought for sure you were inviting me here to tell me we were through… that we could be friends someday, maybe, when you'd had more time to get over what happened."

Loki snorts. "I would have texted that," he admits. "Everyone knows I- I wu- mmph!"

The rest of what he was going to say is flung to the far corners of the universe as Thor all but lunges across the table to kiss him full on the mouth, fierce and hungry. Loki leans in and plants one hand squarely in the middle of his fudge-frosted brownie. The sticky mess barely even registers.

“Crap, I’m sorry,” Thor pants against Loki’s cheek. He snuffles loudly and Loki giggles, one quarter amused and three quarters anxious. “I shouldn’t have assumed-…”

“It’s fine,” Loki cuts in before Thor can say something they’ll both regret. “If you hadn’t, I would have.”

They blot their mouths and compose themselves. At least, they try; Loki can easily make out Thor’s tiny, muffled gasps as he takes his time licking frosting and crushed brownie off his own long fingers. Good desserts are a crime to waste and he’s never been particularly subtle. Restraint is not in his nature. It’s not until all the chocolate’s gone and his hand is shiny wet that Loki switches out his tongue for a napkin.

“I do have manners,” he explains when he catches Thor staring, mouth ever so slightly open. “I just don’t always use them.”

“Uh, you won’t hear any complaints from me.” Thor coughs into one elbow. His cheeks are as red as Loki’s feel. “Do whatever you need to.”

~

They’re too far from Loki’s apartment for Thor to walk him anywhere but the nearest bus stop, and Thor’s not able to spend the night in town anyway; he’d expected to back in Sem before dinner and hadn’t made any arrangements for someone to cover. Loki isn’t sure if it’s touching or weird that Thor still does some of the hands-on barn work personally, despite being one of those in charge of the place. In fairness he has more than enough peculiarities of his own, too many to be pointing fingers.

Touching it is, then.

He’s not invited back to the farm for the evening. But there’s no mistaking the way Thor kisses him again at the bus stop, long and deep, with one hand behind his head and the other hugging his sacrum. They couldn’t physically be closer together, not without taking their clothes off. “Can we try dinner again?” Thor kisses Loki’s cheekbone, his temple, the tip of his nose. “Maybe see if we can do it without making such of a mess of things this time?”

Loki smiles against Thor’s lips. “See if we can do it without me freaking out and being an asshole, you mean?”

“No, actually.” Thor pushes him gently out and cups his chin with one warm hand. “I didn’t think you were being an asshole.” Even this close, close enough that everything is doubled and blurry, Loki can feel Thor searching his face for clues.

“I didn’t want to risk rejection,” he admits, softly.

Thor kisses him again. “Don’t worry, you won’t be.”

Not that either of them would ever admit it, but they might just (both) cry a little when Loki’s bus arrives.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Work is like work, sometimes.

~~o~~  
Barcelona, Spain  
Present day  
~~o~~

Loki has never been _wooed_ before. Now that it’s happening, he’s not quite sure what to make of it. He's had plenty of fans over the years, of course, a broad cast of characters that collectively spans the entire distance between the good-natured, fond-well-wishers who'd followed his career and been nothing more (or less) than supportive and the creepy stalkers just asking for restraining orders. And with them he's always had - just like every one of the agency’s featured models - a full contingent of agency staff carefully screening what actually gets to him.

He's seen some of the notes and most of the flowers, but few of the pictures and none of the panties. Well, one pair, when the girls in the back office just couldn’t resist showing off that leopard print mantyhose last Easter. Because nothing but nothing says High Holy Days like animal print nylon/lycra dick wrappers. Oh, and he hasn’t seen any of the death threats or weapons, either, although he's talked to enough people to know that sort of thing must come in from time to time. He’s protected, to a degree, but he’s neither ignorant nor sheltered.

This isn't like any of that. And the difference isn’t solely due to the way Thor's little notes and gifts (bypass the middleman and) come directly to him, either. Loki knows that much for certain, but still can’t quite put a finger on it.

Maybe it’s the warm way Thor’s little treats make him feel inside.

It's a busy time of year for both of them. Loki is jetting to all the tropical places, modeling the coming summer fashions for his usual portfolio of big names (while, yes, his lesser-known coworkers freeze their perky little nipples off trying to fake summer weather at home... and Loki truly _is_ grateful for his good fortune in this particular situation, he _is_ ). Thor, on the other hand, is gearing up for both ends - the garments, the lambs - of spring/summer production. Sales of summer-weight clothing don’t really peak for months yet, and lambs don’t come until early May, but Thor assures him (and Loki knows enough of both industries to agree) that preparation makes all the difference.

Thanks to the nightmares their respective schedules have become, they see each other about as much as they have throughout adulthood... which is to say _never_. When he's admitting it to himself, Loki doesn't like that. He's had a taste – just the tiniest sip, a smidgeon - of what a life with Thor back in it could be like; by comparison reality is depressingly flat and lifeless.

That’s unfortunately true even in lovely places like Barcelona, where he's gazing out to sea wearing (practically no clothing and) a carefully blank expression while the photographer and two assistants duck and whirl across the boardwalk around him.

It's hard to maintain the proper degree of focus, especially when his mind keeps coming back to the beautiful flowers and handwritten note he'd found in his hotel room at check-in. "I wanted very badly to send you chocolates and champagne," Thor had scrawled across the soft, thick handmade paper – paper so lovely Loki has visions of spreading a ream across the floor and rolling around on it - "but I know you're busy working and I didn't want you to hate me for being… well, you’d probably term it ‘grossly insensitive,’ wouldn’t you?"

He would indeed. Loki’s not sure whether he hates being rendered so utterly transparent, or adores it.

In his bedroom - Loki rates a nice suite, after all, one graced with a little wrought-iron balcony high above the street below; it makes him think of historical fiction and of unsuspecting courtiers shot with poison darts - there's a featherweight merino throw so light it barely exists, because "even Barcelona must get chilly in the first hours of morning."

The bathroom sports a tiny rubber ducky that's actually a rubber sheepy. If it had come complete with a note reading "I love ewe," Loki might actually have vomited. It didn't; it was tucked into its tiny box alone. What he’d actually done instead was cup it to his chest with trembling hands while fighting not to cry.

He's never felt so acutely lonely before, never. Not even in Paris, although his younger self would doubtless have sworn no one could ever be lonelier at the time.

Teenaged drama, at least à la Lang D., had not been a pretty thing. Not to experience, and doubtless not to witness either.

_thank you_ , he'd texted Thor yesterday evening. He'd sent a picture of the little floating sheep wrapped in a washcloth and tucked in his palm.

In return, Thor had simply sent _miss you_.

"-told you at the outset, we want more pensive and less angsty," the photographer is saying. Loki grimaces. He's a professional. He shouldn't need to be reminded of this sort of thing. He breaks pose and stretches, quickly. Time is money, and the guy is clearly already annoyed with him. Making that worse isn’t going to accomplish anything useful.

"Sorry," he says when he catches everyone glaring. Apologizing is always physically painful. "My mind wandered. It won't happen again." When Leah climbs down off her stool and comes over to see if he needs something, he waves her angrily away. "Jet lag," he lies, not even caring if she believes him. "I need to eat more protein next time."

The rest of the shoot is flawless, of course. When Loki wants something, he gets it. Still, it's exhausting. It takes a lot out of him.

~

"I'm getting too old for this shit," he complains to Leah as they wander past the street performers and colorful wooden stands (selling equally colorful birds and flowers) on their way to grab dinner later. He curses again, more colorfully and in his native tongue, when he nearly rolls an ankle dodging a tourist with what has to be the world’s largest pull-behind suitcase.

She laughs, once he catches his balance. They both know a fall, even a minor one, is no laughing matter. Not in this line of work. "Whatever you say, boss," she tells him.

~

Leah isn’t nearly as easily put off on the flight home. She takes Loki’s hand in hers and frowns at him across the aisle. "Seriously, what’s going on? Are you missing Thor?"

Loki snorts. He pulls his hand back. "Of course not. I'm just tired of traveling." He is; he's tired of that, along with the back-to-back work and the constant training. He's not sure he's had more than a few gulps of wine or a single salty treat since he'd met up with Thor in Northern Oslo all those weeks ago. So, yes, he’s tired. It’s not the whole truth, but it's part of it. She should take what she gets and be grateful.

Of course, if dealing with Leah was that simple, he would have tired of her company years ago.

She doesn't reach for him again, but she doesn't nod or smile either. "You don't need to work like this, not anymore. Not with the Aes account, especially." Loki grits his teeth. He hates this conversation. "I mean it," she says, even when he doesn’t argue. She's not wrong, of course; he hates that most of all. "You should start making time in your life for the things you care about. Before it's too late and all you have left is a big double armful of regrets. All those _should haves_ and _could haves_ ," she adds with a soft, resigned-sounding sigh. "Haven't you got enough of those in your collection already?"

For a long moment he hates (not just the conversation but) her, with a deep, visceral anger. But then it hits him: this problem, like so many others before it, isn’t her. This one is his own.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

No one is important enough to renege on jobs already committed, Darcy reminds him before he even has a chance to ask her. Not unless the model is on his or her deathbed. Loki briefly contemplates blaming Leah, but that will only win him the wrath of two crafty women. "I know," he tells Darcy faux cheerfully. "It's just that I haven't really seen the countryside in the spring in ages. I was hoping to tack a couple of days of sightseeing on to the end of the Aes job."

She gives him one of her infamous looks. "Sightseeing. Right. Do you think you can _see those Tonsberg sites_ without drinking too much, eating things that leave you bloated, or coming back walking like you've got something stuck up your-?"

"Fuck off," he snaps, by reflex, before he remembers that he's trying for a favor. "Um, yes," he goes on, much more politely. "I can definitely sightsee without doing any of those things." Thor has been nothing but accommodating when it's come to the demands of this business, at least based on what he’s said to Loki, and all they've done so far is kiss and grope blindly at one another anyway. This mini-vacation isn't about getting shitfaced and laid… it's not. It's about going back to Sem outside the structure his work imposes and seeing if he can stand being there. Because Loki is no fool; part of sharing Thor's life in any way is going to be dealing with the farm again. With moving past his own hang-ups and distorted memories.

Darcy scrunches up her mouth and eyes him skeptically. "Okay," she agrees after several seconds of silence (over which Loki swears she should be able to hear his heart pounding). "I'll do everything in my power to make some adjustments to the job after that one. But Loki?"

"Mm?" He braces himself; he knows what's coming.

"If you come back from Tonsberg anything but ready to work, Natasha will beat it out of you so thoroughly that you won't sit again until June. Got it?"

Loki nods. He doesn't dare laugh, not when he knows she's a hundred percent serious. And, of course, able to deliver. "Thank you," he says, still politely, and then stands. He knows better than to jokingly tell her he owes her one, either.

"I would say you're welcome," she tells him, finally smiling, "but that's something you always assume. But, yes. After the Aes shoot, please have a few days with your sweetie. We all need a break from your charming personality."

He doesn't trust his own mouth, not after that. Instead he nods and hurries for the stairs. The Aes shoot is only a month away; he isn't going to blow this. He can't afford to, really.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki might just survive Sem. _Might_.

~~o~~  
Tonsberg, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

The second trip out to Aes is differently nerve-wracking. They don't have to get up so ridiculously early this time, for starters; the photographer wants summery lighting, and this time of year nature will better mimic the desired effect closer to midday. And while Loki's going to be seeing Thor for the first time in months, sure, they've texted (and even talked) regularly. That, and they're on known (good) terms now. He has a pretty clear idea of where he stands with Thor this time.

Specifically, Loki knows that Thor wants to try to (re)forge a relationship between them, and is very sweetly going about doing so. With flowers and notes and pretty little heartfelt presents. It would probably be infuriating (not to mention nauseating) except that, when Loki forces himself to _really_ think back to their time spent growing up together, he has to admit it; the seeds of this Thor have always been there.

Despite everything Thor had never been mindfully unkind. Even at his worst, the issue was really more that he hadn't always _been_ mindful.

The proverbial ball is a really nice one, and it's solidly in Loki's court. The problem? Only this: he isn't sure how to play it.

Like it or not, he wants this to work. He's thoroughly disgusted with himself over how deeply Leah's awful, smarmy dream future - the one that sees him giving up his international modeling work and semi-retiring under an exclusive Aes contract, and then moving back out here in the middle of nowhere (without giving up the apartment, of course; he'll still want to come into the city occasionally, to meet with his agency or enjoy a little culture, and that rooftop patio really is too perfect to lose) to set up house with his dearly beloved - appeals to him. And he's terrified, because his heart is cold and dark and hard and he doesn't do Meaningful. Or Loving. Or Partnership. Loki ripped out every last bit of his own sweetness years ago and threw it into the Seine to drown.

Loki hurts. He hurts his staff, he hurt his family (back when he still had one), he hurts his would-be friends. He tears out the hearts of even his most sincere, deserving fans and tramples everything into the studio floor.

Of course, more than all of that combined, Loki hurts himself. In little ways, and terribly. Forever and always.

As the van bumps through Tonsberg proper and turns to head out towards Sem, Loki takes silent, internal stock of his immediate plans. He has - okay, his people have - booked a hotel room in Tonsberg, a nice one, and made sure a rental car will be at said hotel waiting for him. Leah will see to it that the crew drops him off there on their way home tonight... because he hasn't yet told Thor. In fact, Loki hasn't even decided whether or not he's going to. If anyone (as in Leah) asked, he'd say it all hinges on how Thor receives him.

Leah would call him a liar.

She wouldn't be wrong.

Loki's wearing a long, seamless cotton knit shift that's more or less a nightgown. Aes' summer-weight throws and wraps are loosely-knit, delicate, diaphanous things; in the closeups, he will essentially be naked. Beautifully made-up and tastefully posed, no doubt - Aes makes lovely things for families, and even in the fashion magazines they won't want to tiptoe the line between art and porn - but still naked. It won't do to be crisscrossed with welts or lines, something about which Darcy had not-so-lovingly reminded Natasha a little more than a week ago.

He's done tons of nude work over the years. Advertising, fashion, art books. Performance installations, like that one in New York where he'd stood as motionless atop a pillar as a marble statue while a crowd of the city's most rich and famous had milled around sampling hors d'oeuvres and sneaking impolitely-large gulps of champagne. That all-but pornographic US ad campaign a while back, followed by a fairly center-stage role in its actually-pornographic European counterpart. Even the last Aes shoot, where he'd been prancing around with his robe hanging open in between shots.

Loki's proud of his body, justifiably. He isn't shy and normally has no qualms about posing sans anything at all.

But this will be the first time _Thor_ \- because Loki's expecting (hoping?) their _client_ will spend much more of the afternoon hanging around the set this time, especially since Thor's mentioned it quite often in some of their recent conversations - has seen him naked in the flesh since- since they were deep in the throes of horny, awkward puberty.

It's also going to be the first time he's been naked in Sem - because this time they're shooting right out in the hills, not in some safe, neutral haven - since the last time he and Thor'd fucked there. Here, looking at the scenery around them.

Whether the whole thing is ultimately hot or awful, it's going to be uncomfortable and unnerving and jarring.

And on top of all that Loki has to actually _work_ , too. He's not being paid to come out here and blush and pout like a lovesick teenager. He needs to get the job done.

The client - it helps to think of things that way, right up until the point where it doesn't - is going for a different look this time. On the plus side, that's gotten him out of repeating all that ridiculous hair-primping; this time he's going out there sporting a two-day-old blowout pulled up in a soft, sloppy updo. Too messy to count as a bun; loose strands and tendrils everywhere, like he's just rolled out of bed. Which he had, right before the stylist had shown up to prep him.

"Don't play in that," Leah reminds him, gently slapping his hand away as he forgets himself (yet again) and starts to rake a hand up into his hair. "If Hilde has to scramble around fixing you up once we get there, you know she's going to kill you."

One of the makeup artists snickers and Hilde hisses.

"It won't happen again," Leah assures Hilde as she takes hold of Loki's wrists. "And don't you go taking that attitude either, mister," Leah admonishes him as he slips free and spins his bucket chair-seat to hiss back at everyone.

"Okay, people, that's enough," the shoot manager tells all of them. "Let me remind you that we're all adults here." She glares at Loki. "Even you. Humor me, won't you, and try acting like one. You might even like it," she says, still looking straight at him. "Can't know until you try, can you?"

"Don't," Leah whispers as Loki bristles. "Let it go. So. Not. Worth. It. Remember," she adds when he bares his teeth, "Darcy's doing you a favor. You don't want all these people coming back tonight and telling her you went all extra-extra-diva on them, do you?"

It's true. He doesn’t. Loki pulls in a huge breath through his nose and lets her swing him back around as he sighs it back out.

"You okay?" Leah's voice is too soft for the other to hear, at least not over their jokes and laughter.

"I'm nervous," Loki admits, which is about three percent of it. He looks at his hands, at his summery-green nails that render his eyes almost grey by comparison. "I don't know how this is going to go. I don't know what will happen."

She tips his chin up with two fingers and looks him in the eye. "You haven't told him, have you?"

"Hm?" He stalls, tilting his face free of her hand and looking past her towards the window.

"About your holiday. Your time off. Thor just thinks you're out today for the shoot, doesn't he?"

Loki accidentally shrugs his gown off one shoulder; Leah sets it to rights for him. "I thought it would be more professional this way," he lies. "Didn't want the crew or the Aes staff all up in my business."

" _That's_ why you wanted the car sent to your hotel," she says to him, still softly, but there's a little bit of an edge to her voice now. "If you didn't like how the day went, you were going to sneak off and never even mention it:"

"Are," he corrects her. "Not were, are. As in _am going to_."

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head, all at the same time. If Loki tried that on these bumpy rural roads, the motion would make him carsick. "I wouldn't be so sure of that if I were you, kiddo."

"You wouldn't dare," he tells her.

"Oh?" Her eyes narrow. "Watch me."

~

Thor isn't out there to meet them, which is somehow both a relief and heartbreaking. There's a dressing table set up in what will be Loki's trailer, though, and it's all tricked out with his favorite brand of water and another one of those lovely little notes Thor's fast becoming _Loki-famous_ for. "I thought you might want your space while you're getting settled," it reads. "I'll do my best to stop out here and visit once I'm done with the flock."

And underneath, there's a little heart... and a quickly-scrawled addition: "I'm ridiculously excited thinking about how I might get to see you!"

"See? That doesn't sound so scary," Leah says from just behind him. Loki jumps and squeals.

"Quit spying," he huffs. "I hate you."

She only laughs and tugs the soft, stretched neckline of his- yes, out here in public, it’s a dress; there’s no way around it… back up onto his shoulder. Again. “Stop,” she says, still laughing and not even bothering to try to hide it. “You’re really not scaring me.”

~

Loki needs a few minutes to reach a calm place (in his own head) once they’ve made it all the way out to the field where they’ll be shooting. The countryside is beautiful – far more so than he remembers from childhood, actually; all green, rolling pastures against a backdrop of beautifully muted, multicolor hills – and the weather is surprisingly mild and pleasant, but he hasn’t been back here since his early teens. Looking around at the rocks and sheep launches an avalanche of memories that’s just this side of suffocating.

He’ll be working with one of his favorite photographers today, though, so it’s okay. Bitter and jaded as he is, both her good-natured pragmatism and her patience never cease to amaze him. “Not everyone’s completely comfortable working in such an unstructured setting,” he hears her (basically excusing his weirdness by) telling one of the techs. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Give him a little while and I promise you we’ll get exactly what we’re here for.”

She’s wrong in her reasoning (possibly intentionally) but so accurate in her conclusion that Loki smiles right over top of what might otherwise have been a small explosion.

Once they do get started the shoot itself unfolds smoothly and easily. Today’s Aes product – a soft summer palette of those unbelievably delicate summer-weight throws, the fabric so airy and fragile-looking that Loki’s almost afraid to touch them – moves and drapes beautifully, and the stylist couldn’t be better. As a team they move from pose to pose and shot to shot with minimal fussing and very little downtime.

_Which is probably, in retrospect, how Loki completely missed the point when Thor came up the long slope behind them and took one of the unoccupied seats (well out of frame, with the computer) at the director’s worktable. Because he was expecting Thor; he honestly was. He was just so focused on his work that he forgot to even wonder about it._

They move from the covered shots – the ones where the stylist artfully drapes Loki in this wrap or that one – to a series of uncovered ones. The director comes out onto their makeshift set and explains what they’re going for: a look that evokes the work of Andrew Wyeth; the field beyond, with Loki standing (ankles delicately crossed, and) arms outstretched overhead as the wrap billows out behind him. The breeze has picked up, which is a good thing… the guys never like lugging the wind machine (and all those industrial-strength extension cords) what feels like halfway back to Oslo, and Loki hates standing around waiting while they do it. Plus, this is bound to look more natural. The client likes natural.

Loki gets the feel of it quickly. The photographer shoots from all directions, working her way around him in a full circle; the rear and three-quarter shots (which showcase more fabric and marginally less Loki) are specifically for this assignment, the quarter and full-frontal nude shots are art for art’s sake. If the client wants them, great; if not, this time will come off the bill and – once the collection is publically available, of course, so there’s no question of early disclosure – the images will become part of her (and his) private portfolio.

It’s all very pleasant. The breeze, the sun on his shoulders, the soft fabric in his hands and the early spring grass underfoot. Loki shuts his eyes and arches his back and thinks about absolutely nothing.

“Perfect,” the photographer tells him once she’s finished. “Here,” she suggest to the hairstylist, “let that updo down and we’ll do one last round.”

They do two more rounds, actually, one with both the wrap and his hair streaming out behind him and then a second turned ninety degrees. Loki pulls the fabric carefully back in and clutches it with both hands just below his collarbones. The wind starts to pick up and it’s a little harder to zone out with his hair whipping him in the face… but he finds his way back to a place of inner solitude and- well, he manages.

Right up until they finish the last shot and are given the go-ahead to stroll back down to the table and wait while the director clears everything. Loki’s just handed the last wrap, a lovely pale leaf-green thing he’d love to add to his personal collection, back to the stylist’s assistant and is about halfway back down the hill – as naked as the day he was born, excepting a pair of boots that aren’t much more than slippers – when he spots Thor.

“Shit,” Loki blurts out. He can feel his face go bright pink. “I’m sorry,” he tells- everyone? No one. It’s stupid, but he is sorry. He’s also pissed… the entire rest of the team must have known the client was on set, even if that’s all they knew, and no one had felt the need to tell him. “Fuck. Can someone get me a robe, please?” He hates every single one of them.

Leah hurries up to him, holding out his shift. It’s the right thing to do; as sure as Loki might be that every frame is perfect, the shoot isn’t over and he’s not cleared to dress again until everything’s official. Still, with what’s just happened he can’t not snap at her.

“It’s okay,” she tells him quietly. “You’re beautiful. Everyone thinks so. Really! Shh. Just come look at your pictures.”

He lets her help him slip the shift over his head and, with a light hand on his elbow, steer him the rest of the way down.

All those _everyones_ he might otherwise have killed are saved by the way Thor just can’t stop looking at him.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going home isn't so easy.

~~o~~  
Sem (Tonsberg) Norway  
Almost sixteen years ago  
~~o~~

_Thor's mother catches Loki in a tight embrace before he's quite made it all the way across the threshold. They hug in silence, Loki biting the inside of his cheek hard to keep from weeping. He needs to be tough; he’s almost a man now. His father reminds him regularly that men do not cry._

_Loki does cry, though, and he’s not sure what that makes him. He's just bawled pretty much the whole ride from his own house to the Borsons' homestead. This time of year Thor’s family is out here nonstop; with so much to do at the farm they’ve long known there isn't any point in trying split their time between the sheep and their place in Tonsberg proper._

_It’s not a particularly long or difficult ride, and Loki does it often. Today, he fervently hopes, it’s been just long enough to get all the tears out of his system._

_Frigga pushes him back a foot or so, hands warm on his shoulders. Loki flat-out adores her, with her beautiful golden hair (flax spun with sunshine, so much like Thor's), her quick wit and nimble fingers. She weaves by far the most gorgeous woolens Loki has ever seen, and out here in the heart of sheep country that's saying something._

_"Not that we don't want you here," she assures him, "because of course we do, but shouldn't you be home with your family?" She looks worried and fond; Loki has to bite himself again._

_He shrugs. "My father told me to get out from underfoot. And it doesn’t matter." Laufey has been stumbling drunk for days now, and Loki knows his father never likes to be seen in that condition. Not even by his own son. He swallows an almost-sob and hiccups. "My mother- she doesn't know who I am anymore anyway."_

_"Oh, sweetie." Frigga pulls him close again. "I'm so sorry. Stay, then. You're always welcome here, you know."_

_He is, and he isn't. Every since Thor had started with the cracking voice and hairy armpits of puberty, a year or so after the blood brothers incident, Loki and Thor had grown closer than ever and Thor's father had been more and more stern about it. Consequently quick rides home in Odin's truck - on those not-infrequent evenings when it's too dark or too bad out to bike home safely - have replaced their days-long childhood sleepovers, and the increasingly rare nights Loki does spend out at the farm invariably end (well, as far as Odin knows, anyway) in separate bedrooms._

_The quirky little room Thor’s family has set aside for Loki is up in the attic, with sloping ceilings and one low window. It didn’t take long for the boys to figure out why. That first summer Thor and Loki had spent a whole week mapping out the best way to navigate the squeaking staircase. Years later, long after Odin had finally given in to Frigga's demands and "put a few screws in that awful thing," Loki still hasn’t shaken the twinned habits of keeping all the way to the left-hand side or skipping steps three and seven._

_"Thanks," he says into the shoulder of her soft knit top. This year he has finally just outgrown her, but she's still solid oak to his reedy willow sapling. He knows he has a duty to his family. "I don't mean to make my father sound like a-."_

_"Shh," Frigga soothes. Her hand comes up to cup the back of his head. "I know, sweetie,” she tells him, patting his back gently with the other hand. “I know."_

_Loki thinks she just might, actually._

_Thor clears his throat. When Loki opens an eye and peers at him around Frigga's arm, Thor looks- guilty, almost, and edgy. "If Loki’s staying, can he come out and help me check the flock?" His hands are crammed deep in the pockets of his faded work trousers. "I feel bad leaving him alone in here."_

_Loki can feel Frigga's laugh all down his own front. "Well, he wouldn't be alone with me here," she turns a little to remind her son. "But, yes. If he'd like, Loki's welcome to go help you." Thor shoots a quick look at Loki before just as hurriedly glancing away. His expression is pleading and- and something else Loki fervently hopes Frigga hasn't seen._

_Loki clears his throat and lets go of Frigga. All of a sudden he finds himself wanting to help with the sheep surprisingly badly. "Sure," he says, as brightly as he can. "I'd like that."_

_"Just don't wander too far away," Frigga warns them both as they head back out the door. "If something- comes up, you know, I want to be able to find you."_

_"If someone calls and tells me your mother has died," Loki knows she means. He’s grateful she opted not to say it._

_"We won’t," Thor – already out the door and halfway down the steps – calls back over his shoulder. "We won't go past the high pasture."_

_They don't. For the first few minutes, in fact, they don't go any farther than that shady, hidden spot behind the toolshed._

_On the bicycle ride over, Loki'd idly wondered if a person could actually be too sad to get it up. To, as one of the articles he'd read recently termed it, sustain an erection._

_Maybe it really can happen. Today, though, with Thor doing his very best to provide welcome distraction – using every means his hands and mouth can offer – it- well, it doesn't._

_And later on, taking care of the sheep is almost enough to let Loki keep forgetting. In fact, the two of them make it almost all the way back down to the barn before he starts to cry._

_~_

_Despite everything Loki’s been doing a lot of getting taller recently. He’s completely outgrown his old suit, the one he wore to Thor's grandfather's funeral. Yes, the pants still fit around the waist, at least if he sucks his stomach in a little, but when he’d pulled them on earlier there were actual inches of pale ankle showing. By contrast he's swimming in the suit one of their neighbors had brought by the house this morning. He’s not even sure who’d called her. "Your father is too despondent to take you shopping," she'd countered when he’d balked. "You'll be fine in this. Your mother has just died, Loki. It's not like people will be judging your appearance."_

_Nobody else will come in here; he has his parents’ bedroom all to himself. As he studies his reflection in what had been his mother's dressing mirror - rat's nest hair, puffy face, red eyes... all wrapped up in a sack of a jacket that looks more like a bathrobe than a proper outfit - Loki can't help but think about all the ways she was lying._

_"Despondent" doesn’t mean being shitfaced at 9:00 AM, and – if he’s stupid enough to show up dressed like this - people certainly will be staring. Snickering, probably._

_He has to do a reading. He looks like he's five._

_Once again Thor’s mother comes to the rescue. "My," she says, looking him up and down. "Thor's church suit" - and that's a joke in itself, because Thor goes to church about as often as the sheep do - "from last year might just about fit you. Odin,” she adds, turning to speak directly to her husband, who’s standing with Thor out in the hallway. “I need you to do me a favor."_

_She's right; Thor’s suit nearly does fit him. It's a little big in the waist, true, but at least no one is going to mistake it for a grain sack. And best of all, over the ever-present smells of wool and farmland, the suit smells a little like Thor._

_Loki wipes his eyes. They just well up again. "Mm," he hums, turning this way and that in front of the mirror. This is so, so much better. "Thanks for saving me." He knows better than to mention the Thor part; Odin is still lurking just outside the doorway. Loki can hear him pacing the hallway with long strides, probably because they're due at the chapel in less than thirty minutes now._

_"Of course," Frigga says. She reaches out to blot at his eyes with a handkerchief. "That's what we're here for."_

_~_

_The casket is covered in pretty flowers… bouquet after bouquet after bouquet, in every color imaginable plus a few Loki thinks he probably couldn’t have pictured. It all blurs together in a petal-strewn tapestry. He’s a little surprised to note that the chapel itself is standing room only. He hadn't realized this many people knew his mother._

_When he stands up in front of everyone to read her favorite poem, the one about coming home from the sea, Loki has to stop and compose himself after each and every stanza. His hands are shaking and his tears make the words wobble and blur. By the end, though, he's looking wet-eyed out over a chapel packed with sobbing people… and it’s all because of him. He feels awful, but also as powerful as he's ever been. He feels everything, all mixed in together._

_It's beautiful and horrible and amazing and wrong._

_~_

_"Can I come stay out at the farm with you guys tonight?" The house has finally cleared out. Loki’s father has retreated to the guest room already - Laufey hasn't gone in the master bedroom since Farbauti died, not even to get his own clothing - and even with two neighbors planning on sleeping over he isn't sure he's up to spending the night (together, but) alone._

_He watches as Frigga and Odin exchange a long look. "Let me go check on your father," Thor’s mother says as Thor swings an arm around his shoulders. "Wait here, all of you."_

_"I'll help you pack your things," she tells Loki a few minutes later, shooting her husband another look. There's a tightness to her face that wasn't there earlier. "Your father is going into town for a few days tomorrow morning, and he thinks you'd be better off out at the farm. You know, not here alone or anything.”_

_"Mm." Loki doesn't dare try actually speaking. It hurts, a lot, even though he's gotten exactly what he asked for. Things have changed too much since his most recent birthday. Not for the first time, he wonders if growing up is going to suck a whole lot more than he’d expected._

~~o~~  
Sem (Tonsberg), Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

After yesterday’s shoot Loki had been tired. He’d also been stupidly embarrassed about being caught out, naked and oblivious, and then angry with himself for feeling that way. All told he hadn't been up for staying behind to hang out with Thor but, after (Thor’s face had fallen as though not one but all of the lambs had just died, and) Leah had elbowed him in the ribs with enough force to rival Natasha, he'd confessed to being in town for a few days and promised to call in the morning.

Thor had hugged him then, a big bear’s version of the kind of hugs Loki remembers getting from Frigga. And if Loki had (maybe) cried a little in the van on the way to his hotel – nothing showy, just a few tears streaking down his cheeks, one after another – Leah had been polite (and wise) enough to say nothing.

He had taken a long soak in the hotel suite's wonderful tub and then - after a makeshift dinner of cheese, wine, and cookies - had turned in early. Not too early to read Thor's relentlessly cheery text about looking forward to the following day, though.

Loki, personally, was both eagerly awaiting and dreading it. He hadn’t been sure if he should share that with Thor; in the end, he’d (opted for just saying good night, and) hadn’t.

Somehow he'd managed to sleep like the dead anyway.

~

It's a pleasant spring day, cool enough to warrant cozy, soft, not-in-the-least-model-ish clothing, but sunny and not too cold to crack open the car windows. Even so, driving right through Sem (not around it, and not in the van… where he could turn away and look at nothing if he needed to) proves just short of overwhelming.

Or maybe not quite short of it.

He pulls over and idles for a couple of minutes, directly across the street from the house he'd grown up in. The little place is looking good these days, well-kept and freshly painted and far too tidy to still be in the family. Loki has no idea whether or not his father is even alive, after all these years; either way, there isn’t a doubt in his mind: Laufey clearly doesn't live here.

“Go,” Loki orders himself, before he’s rooted fast to the spot forever.

On the way up to the farm, he's shaking so badly that he has to stop again.

"Where are you?" Thor sounds worried; he'd called not ten seconds after Loki'd texted to say their day’s adventures might be off after all.

Loki's not the actor he’d once been, not after the (unnecessarily) stressful shoot yesterday and the messed-up morning he’s been having. He can't keep the quaver out of his voice this time. "Stay put," Thor tells him, and Loki can hear a car door slam and then the roar of an engine. "I’m on my way out there to meet you."

He can’t think anymore. He shuts his eyes and counts the beats of his heart, on and on and on.

Thor’s soft tap on the window startles him. “Loki? Are you okay?”

He blinks at Thor, right outside his window. Thor’s nose is so close that it’s practically smearing the glass. He shakes himself a little to try and clear the fog away. “Yeah,” he says, looking down at his still-trembling hands. “It just- I drove past my old house. It freaked me out more than I thought it would.”

It’s Thor’s turn to blink. “You’ve never been- home? Not even since you came back to Norway?”

Loki snorts. As long as they’ve known each other, Thor has always been optimistic to the verge of naïveté. “It’s not my home anymore,” he says, flatly. “And why would I? I’m dead to everyone there, remember?”

Thor winces and Loki cringes, even with the glass between them. “Then I’m sorry” Thor says, instead of the harsh words Loki expected (and deserves, probably). “I should never have made you come out here.”

“Nobody makes me do anything,” Loki says, trying to smile. This isn’t how he meant their day to go. “Surely you’ve learned that by now.”

“But it was cruel of-,” Thor starts to argue. Loki holds up a finger and cuts him off.

“Hush. It was nothing. You live out here. This place is your life. If we’re going to try- whatever it is we’re trying, I need to be able to come out here. See? Easy.”

Thor’s mouth opens and closes, and then again. No words come out. Loki takes a deep breath through his nose and does his best to let it out silently. “Look,” he says, “let’s try this again. I wore warm stuff, and boots I can walk in.” He takes another breath. Thor’s just waiting patiently for him to go on, even though squatting by the car has to be starting to hurt by now, and it’s a little unnerving. Loki hasn’t got much more nerve to lose. “Can we go up to the high pasture? I feel like I didn’t get to spend enough time with the sheep yesterday,” _and don’t get any ideas_ , he doesn’t add, because at this point _ideas_ could be nice. He might actually benefit from a little distracting.

“Oh,” Thor says. He blinks again, and then smiles. “Yes. Of course. I’d love that.” He gets smoothly to his feet and Loki vows to keep in mind that models aren’t the only ones who have to stay fit and active. “Are you okay to drive the rest of the way?” Thor survey’s Loki’s sloppy emergency parking job. “We can leave your rental here and take the truck together if you want to.”

It’s a cop out, and Loki refuses to let himself take it. There is exactly no reason a grown man – one who has traveled halfway around the world alone – can’t keep it together long enough to drive a mile. Less than that, probably. “I’m fine,” he says. If he isn’t, he will be. “You go ahead and I’ll follow right behind you.”

Thor leads them in along one of the service roads. It doesn’t take them past the houses, or the office compound... for which Loki is very, very grateful. All he sees, from the road to the little stone barn, is grass and rocks and sheep. Well, that, and Thor checking for him in the rearview mirror every few seconds.

By the time they’ve parked and are walking – hand in hand; Thor’d started it, and Loki’d seen no reason to stop – slowly up the hill, Loki has to admit he’s feeling a whole lot better. When they get to the top, he thinks, he might even be glad he came out here.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Thor is more reasonable than Loki, hard as that might be to believe.

~~o~~  
Sem (Tonsberg), Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

"So." Thor is braced on his forearms against the smooth, bark-less trunk of a long-fallen, longer-dead tree. Loki can see the tiny muscles above his wrists shift as Thor runs a finger along the path some insect carved years ago. He clears his throat, and Loki knows: all the awkwardness, well... it hasn't stayed hidden. "This hasn't gone so well, has it?"

"I'm not sure what you mean," Loki mostly lies. "It's beautiful up here. And the sheep are- wooly." They are. He never has much liked the way their oily waterproofing comes off on his hands, but it's never been enough to stop him from touching. "They're so triangular right now. I can't wait for lambing." Being in Sem at all still has him so hopelessly shaken-up that his brain will barely function. Even so, he loves lambs. And he has to get used to this or- or Thor will surely dump him. Or refuse to un-dump him, or whatever the next unpleasant step would naturally be. "It's fine. It's nice." He isn't quite brave enough to press closer; if Thor shifts away it will wreck him.

"Loki-," Thor starts. He shoots Loki a quick look, expression pained. "Okay, how about this? I'll talk, and you listen. All the way through," he adds, one hand coming up as Loki starts to interrupt him. "And then you’ll think about what I've said _before_ you answer. Can you do that for me?"

In his ears Loki can hear the whoosh whoosh of his own heartbeat, and over that a bird singing in the distance. He isn't used to being the one receiving the orders - although gods know he should be by now! - and the muscles in his jaw and neck are jumping. "Mm," he hums, nodding. The bird abruptly stops. "Go on," he prompts. If life as he knows it is about to end, again, the least he can do is try to act his age about it. He does want to be able to look Leah in the eye later, after all. "I promise. I'll listen."

"Thanks." Thor pivots and pushes himself up to sit on the tree. Even through the thick fabric of his shirt Loki can see the big muscles in his shoulders straining. It's easier to focus on that, the swell and flow of power under Thor's clothes, than it is to think about what must be coming. "Look," Thor says, studying Loki’s face. "These ultimata you're giving yourself? You have to live here, you have to be okay with Sem... all the things you say have to happen for anything to work between us?"

Loki nods. He isn't sure if that's allowed, so he makes it a quick one.

"I want you to know those are all- they're just you. I don't feel that way. Not about any of it."

That's too much. "Oh, bullsh-," Loki snaps before he can quite catch himself. He claps both hands over his mouth and mumbles "sorry" through them.

"It's not bullshit, Loki." Thor looks more serious and worried than annoyed. "You don't have to live in Sem. _We_ don't have to live in Sem. Tonsberg is within walking distance. We don't even have to live _together_ , if you don't want to. You can stay in your place in Oslo. Or we could move somewhere in between. Whatever you need, Lo, I can work with it. And besides, isn't that getting the cart before the horse a little? You probably haven't even decided whether or not you still have feelings. For, you know, grown-up me." One corner of Thor's mouth curls up in a wry little smile that would be much more at home on Loki. "You don't need to put yourself through this. Really."

Loki waits until it feels like Thor is done talking, and then some. Even so he doesn't know how long Thor might expect him to be _thinking_. "But that's not true," he insists. "You belong here with the sheep. You told me you were never leaving."

"And I'm sure you never said anything as a kid and then changed your mind about it later," Thor shoots back. For a moment Loki thinks they will fight, which would doubtless be easier. No; with visible effort Thor gets himself back under control. "I love working here," he explains. "It's important to me, and to a whole slew of other people. But I don't have to _live_ here - right here," he adds, circling a hand to encompass the whole of the Borson landholdings, "- to do that. We have a big staff, Loki. And Volstagg and Hilde live onsite. They do," he adds as Loki grunts in surprise. "In the shepherd's cottage. With five kids. I don't know how they do it. Okay, yes, I'm officially babbling." He shakes his head. Some of his hair has worked free of its elastic; it floats around his face like the sun's corona. "Anyway, whatever you want and need? I will work with it."

"And what if I want and need nothing," Loki pushes, even as his stomach lurches.

Thor shuts his eyes for just a second. "I'd be sad," he admits. "But you know what? I've already had my biggest fantasy come true... already gotten my happy-ever-after ending. Because all I really wanted was for you to be alive. And look," he exclaims as he gestures at Loki, "you are. Anything else is- never mind. My wildest dreams came true already."

Oh.

Loki isn't quite sure when the tears had started spilling down his own face, but there they are. "And you do want more?" His voice comes out as a raspy whisper.

"I want everything," Thor assures him. "But only if you want it too. And even then we don't have to live in Sem. Really."

The sky overhead whirls and tips and Loki's knees give out on him. It doesn’t even hurt; Thor’s quick enough to ease his landing. He lies in a crumpled heap on the ground and blinks away more and more tears as Thor strokes his hair and murmurs softly to him. It isn't until one of the sheep ambles over to inspect his face that he hauls himself back to sitting. "I want," he starts, but Thor silences him with gentle, sheepy-smelling fingers.

"Think about it," Thor reminds him. "You can tell me later."

Loki clears his throat. "What about your parents?" Frigga had always had a soft spot for him, but he can't imagine Odin being okay with- with any of this.

"My father wants to offer you an exclusive contract," Thor starts, which is shocking but not what Loki meant at all. "No, I know that wasn't what you were asking. They're smart people, Loki. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they've figured it out already."

"How?" Loki blinks again, with disbelief this time. "I've been so careful."

Thor cocks an eyebrow. "They own the company. They've seen all the photos. And it definitely hasn't escaped my mother's notice that I've been so ridiculously happy recently."

Loki means to say something profound, or maybe snarky. He does. What actually falls out of his mouth, though, is a squawked "your _parents_ have seen me _naked_??"

"They've see _Lang_ naked," Thor corrects, laughing. "And they're farmers. Nothing shocks them."

Some things probably do. "But you told me your father didn't want us together," he fusses.

"He probably didn't, back when we were young teens," Thor admits. "I don't think gay and childless was the legacy he hoped for. But what I _told you_ was that he didn't want me to leave the business. And I haven't. And so far, _you_ haven't asked me to."

Ah. "Hence the contract offer," Loki says drily. "They can lock me in, too."

"The contract is because with you in our stuff, our sales are astounding," Thor counters. "But, like I said, they're smart people. You might not be completely wrong there, Lo." He leaves off petting Loki's hair and starts tracing the wet, sharp lines of his face instead.

When Thor's fingers trail across his lips, Loki tastes the salt of his own tears in their wake. He shivers. "Leah does say I'm a nutjob," he warns.

"Eh," Thor says with a shrug and a warm smile. "You've been through a lot. I think you're entitled to a little worrying." He tugs Loki all the way into his lap, crosswise, as though all that flesh and bone is no heavier than one of Aes’ blankets.

It’s been a long time since Loki was last manhandled with such casual ease. He shakes his head to stop the flood of memories, most of them not particularly pleasant. Thor pulls him even closer and rubs his back with one warm hand. “Shh,” Thor whispers into his hair. “Whatever you need, I swear to you: we can make it happen.”

Loki isn’t sure that’s true – even Thor Odinson can’t turn back the clock and do a whole life over – but he lets himself relax into the gentle rubbing anyway.

He’s almost asleep when Thor asks “so, do you want to meet- well, I guess it’s not meeting, exactly.” Thor laughs. “Do you want to _say hi to_ my parents, or is that too much for one visit? I wasn’t sure if it might be easiest to just get at all over with.”

“Hm.” Loki stretches, nuzzling against Thor in the process. “I’m not sure.” He isn’t. “Why don’t you take me on a tour and then I’ll see if I’m up to it?”

~

Thor is clearly delighted with the operation he and his family have built, and rightfully so. He’s accomplished everything he’d said he would, all those many years ago – Aes strictly produces wool and fine textiles these days; it’s been more than a decade since the last sheep or lamb was sold for slaughter – but also gone on to do it all better. “Everything is as humane as possible,” Thor explains as they stand at the doorway of the main barn. “Our sheep spend as much of their lives outside as they’d like, and whenever we can we make coming indoors their choice. It’s less convenient and less cost-effective, sure, but we handpick our workers and treat them as well as we do our sheep so you won’t find anyone complaining.”

The few workers they see smile and say hello. Thor introduces Loki – who tries to ignore the likely fact that every single one of these unassuming people has seen his bare behind and then some – and then chats with his team as though they’re all equals. Only one man asks if Lang is just his professional name. Loki laughs. “It’s complicated.”

They make their way through the whole compound, starting with the straw-filled pens where any ewe that wants to give birth inside (and a couple who’ve lost their right to choose, based on issues with past deliveries) will lamb. They stop for a few minutes in the big room where the sheep are sheared. “Our own staff does the shearing, too,” Thor tells Loki proudly. “I know it would be cheaper and faster to bring a team in, but we don’t want our animals mistreated. It’s not about hurrying here. The people who work here love the sheep; I can always trust them to be careful and patient.”

Conversely, the wool-preparation and textile buildings are – well, seem; Loki is no expert on woolens – as modern inside as possible. “I’m not a technophobe,” Thor says, laughing, as Loki remarks upon it, “and neither are my parents. Where the process touches the sheep, it’s important to me that the animals always come first. In here, the people come first. We’ve done everything we can to make it easy to make our products. And I shouldn’t be taking credit, either… the mastermind behind this part of the business is really my mother.”

Ah, right. Parents, parents, parents. Loki takes a deep breath. “I guess I want to get it over with,” he admits, a little annoyed with the way his own voice is shaking. “As long as that doesn’t mean I have to stay for dinner with them afterwards.”

Thor hooks an arm around Loki’s shoulders and pulls him in for a quick kiss. “Of course not. I mean, my mother will probably offer, but I’ll just tell her we have plans.”

They’re too close together for any decent glaring, not that it stops Loki from trying. “Oh we do, do we?”

“Yes,” Thor says, kissing the side of Loki’s face and laughing. “We’re planning on not eating dinner with them. I’m not out to kidnap you, silly.”

Loki’s surprised to find himself feeling both vindicated and disappointed.

~

“Let me get a look at you!” Frigga whistles. “It’s so wonderful to see you again, sweetie. You look fabulous.” She hurries forward and wraps both arms around Loki, even though he towers over her now. He can’t help but hug her back; she’s so warm and familiar.

Odin is fine, too. He congratulates Loki on the success of their first campaign and expresses his confidence in the latest.

There are no awkward questions… no comments about his name, his history, his faked death or the way – from Thor’s constant hovering and ever-present hands – he’s oh-so-obviously _with_ their son. And while Frigga does indeed offer to pull something together for dinner, she doesn’t press when they say they’re busy. “You’ll have to stop back another time when we can spend more time together” is all she says, with another big hug goodbye.

When Loki says he’ll try, he almost means it.

Thor leads Loki to the line of company trucks parked in the circular drive outside. “I’ll drive us back up to our cars,” he offers when Loki shoots him a puzzled look. “And yes, I know,” he goes on, even though Loki hasn’t said anything, “it’s not all that far to the barn. You may be used to all this walking, but my feet hurt.” It’s highly likely Thor’s job involves a whole lot more walking than Loki’s does, but it has been a long day and Loki certainly appreciates the gesture.

“I don’t want to monopolize your time,” Thor tells Loki as they catch their breath after kissing long and hard against the side of Thor’s own vehicle. There are probably people around; Loki can’t be bothered to care. “Okay, that’s a lie… I do. But I don’t want to make your choices for you. Would you like to go back to your hotel” – he doesn’t add “alone,” but the sad look on his face says it for him – “or do you maybe want to get dinner together?”

Loki kind of wants to do both. He’s having trouble getting enough of Thor but after the day he’s had he needs to recharge his very depleted mental batteries. “Do we have time for me to go back and flop for a little while before we eat?” He scuffs his boot toe in the little stones along the edge of the service road. “I just need a couple of hours.”

Thor’s eyes light up as he checks his phone, and Loki breathes out a quiet sigh of relief. “Mm,” Thor hums. “That gives me time for a nap and a shower.” He laughs. “We’ll have the choice of more restaurants if I don’t smell like sheep shit, won’t we?”

There’s something immensely comforting in laughing happily together.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile back in (and out of) a hotel in Tonsberg...

~~o~~  
Tonsberg, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Loki sits on the floor, arms wrapped around his shins, and looks out over the waterway. The suite is nothing like he's accustomed to - it's an international conference center, Scandinavian-trendy in that blonde-wood-and-metal minimalist fashion that he's never come to love despite spending a good portion of his life here, and it’s far more practical than fancy - but he loves being out on the pier and the view really is something. And once he's gotten his fill of the scenery, Loki plans to avail himself of the nice tub again before dinner.

Showering would mean doing his hair, which feels like way too much work for a town where "going somewhere special" means heading out for burgers and beer. Gourmet burgers, sure, with craft brews and fancy cocktails... but the Ritz it ain't and there's no point in getting all dolled up like it might be. That, and the tub and the view are really all his suite has to offer. He feels like he ought to enjoy them.

Coming back to Tonsberg - the coastal side, where the scenery is compelling, or the inland side where things tail off to rural ridiculously quickly - will (he doesn't allow himself the mental luxury of _would_ ; if Thor is so willing to be flexible, Loki knows he has to prove everyone wrong and make this happen) be a big adjustment. No more car service. No more fancy takeout.

No more late-night bitch sessions with Leah, not unless he's holed up in Oslo or they've resorted to skyping. No more clubbing (not that he has in years, not for real; he lets his coworkers drag him out sometimes, but these days they're all younger and hotter face-to-face and it's surprisingly depressing not to have to turn down any creeper action). Nothing.

A slow pace. Countryside. Enough relaxation to kill a person.

Except Loki knows he spends most of his city time moping around his apartment. Much as he loves the idea of a metropolitan life, he isn't exactly living it.

Plus, Thor has plenty of business in Oslo anyway. And Loki himself will still work out of the agency there. They can go back to town whenever they want, back to visit his beautiful rooftop terrace and his wonderful cleaning lady.

Speaking of which, there must be someone in Tonsberg who cleans. Because it sure as shit isn't going to be Loki.

He sighs and gets slowly to his feet, tugging on the wooden railing. The windows angle, farthest out at ceiling height and closest in at floor level. Loki stands with his toes just brushing the cool metal frame and looks down. With dusk falling the whole thing takes him right back to a bridge over the Seine.

He jerks his fingers off the railing and turns away, pretending he isn't shaking.

~

Loki has just climbed back out of the tub and is busy slathering his flushed, pink self with oil when his phone buzzes.

Thor.

"I'll find a way to stay here," Loki says, just as Thor is asking if he's in the mood for an awesome burger.

"Oh," they say in unison, after a moment, and then it's a struggle to stop laughing.

"Burgers are fine. Good." Loki dabs at his streaming eyes with a soft towel. It's bad enough that he'll be going back to Oslo bloated; Darcy will slaughter him if he's also wrinkly or chapped. "Want me to meet you there?"

"Actually," Thor says after another short pause, "if you don't mind, I was thinking of having one of my guys bring me in. I mean, he lives in town. It wouldn't be a bother."

The hotel and the restaurant are nearly opposite one another... with water in the middle. It’s not like they can walk there. Still. Thor is thinking about staying over. There's exactly no other reason he wouldn't just drive here.

"Sure," Loki says, knowing he's giving more than he means to away. He rattles off the hotel address. "When you get here, we can call a taxi."

~

Waiting for Thor is positively hellish. Loki can't decide between something soft and knitted or a smart, dark green shirt with buttons. Knitwear slips off easily, but in his (weird, yes) book there's little as romantic as someone fumbling to get him out of a button-down. He ultimately opts for the shirt, and a pair of soft black trousers. He's eaten at this restaurant before and it's not the kind of place for flashy sexuality.

That, and he's trying on _homey_ to see how it feels. _When_ he moves here, after all, he’s going to have to get used to it.

Lotion. Mascara. A swipe of matte, colorless lip salve, so he's kissable later. He winds his hair into a soft bun; it will stay out of what's bound to be messy finger food and look perfect afterwards when he (or Thor, he thinks with a little smirk) lets it loose and sends it tumbling over his shoulders.

He's just making a final face at himself in the mirror when the front desk calls him.

Loki's hungry. He wants the evening to unfold, not explode in an instant fit of passion. "Have Mr. Odinson wait at the bar " he tells the concierge. Money is as money does. "And please get us a cab. I'll be down momentarily."

It's bound to be chilly. Loki slips on a pair of black driving moccasins and his long black coat. Low-key doesn't have to mean ugly.

~

Thor's face lights up as Loki makes his way across the lobby.

"Holy shit," Thor says softly - the bar is quietly busy; while there are people all around them, everyone seems to be waiting for someone. "I can never get over how gorgeous you are."

Loki leans in for a quick kiss. "Is that why you like me?"

"Of course not," Thor says right against his ear, “but it’s nice anyway.” Loki's body lights up like a fucking marquee; he was definitely smart to opt for meeting down here in public. His mind doesn't want to rush into bed, but the rest of him clearly feels differently.

Behind the bar the bartender picks up the house line. "Monsieur D'Argent? Sir? Your taxi is waiting."

~

A meal of fancy-pants burgers and parmesan-parsley fries - with Thor, at least - turns out to be a lot more fun than Loki had expected. The restaurant is busy, enough so that he's glad Thor'd thought to make a reservation, but it's not so loud that they can't chat as they take turns feeding each other tidbits. Eventually his cocktail makes him brave. "So," he asks, kicking off one shoe and slipping his toes inside the hem of Thor's pant leg, "did you really get a ride because it was more convenient, or were you hoping to spend the night here?"

Thor looks briefly guilty and then smug. He glances around the restaurant, grinning broadly. The corners of his eyes crinkle and Loki wants to kiss him there, and there. "Actually," Thor says, "I was hoping to spend the night in your hotel room."

Loki mock-pouts. He can feel his cheeks heating. "So no cab sex?"

"No!" Thor snorts. He’s blushing too. "No cab sex. This isn't Amsterdam, you know. Or New York City."

"Fine," Loki huffs, but he can’t help smiling. "I guess you _will_ just have to stay over."

~

They're alone - and all over one another - in the elevator, and Loki lets Thor back him (kissing all the while) clumsily down the hallway. "Here?" Thor nudges him towards the room number. "Give me the key, Lo."

Loki nips Thor's lip and slides the keycard into its slot himself. They drown out the click of the mechanism with more sloppy kisses, though, and Thor wrests it away from him anyway. "Allow me," Thor says, scooping him up like the virginal bride he decided isn’t and then jostling him a bit in an effort to reinsert the key. Loki's too busy squealing to argue.

Squeezing through the doorway in such a fashion can’t be easy, and Loki knows he’s not exactly light despite his comparatively slender frame. Still, Thor does it without bumping his head or smacking his ankles. Loki might love him just a little more for that, come to think of it.

Thor doesn’t set him down, exactly; Loki ends up with his arms slung around Thor’s neck and his legs encircling Thor’s waistline. His coat is enough to protect his back from the cold, hard metal door. The lights coming up from the pier below make the room just bright enough to see. Not that Loki needs to.

~

“Let’s at least get our things off,” Thor pants a few minutes later. “I don’t know about you but I’m roasting.” Now that he’s stopped and is thinking about it Loki’s hot too… the insides of his thighs where they’re pressed against Thor are sticky, and he can feel a trickle of sweat running down his right side. 

“Mm.” He tries kissing Thor again, but the moment has passed; now they’re just sweaty and awkward. He unwinds himself slowly and lets go, trying not to give in to fear as Thor backs away.

“I- I don’t,” Thor starts, and Loki freaks. On the inside.

“This was stupid, I know,” he says quickly. Maybe it’s not all on the inside after all. “You can take my car and I’ll send for it in the morning. Or the concierge can get you a cab.”

“What?” Thor jerks back another half step, as though Loki’d shoved him. His mouth opens and closes; his brows pull together. “I’m sorry,” he says, blinking too rapidly. “I- I thought you wanted this too.” He shrugs his half-off coat back up onto his shoulders and starts in on its buttons. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I- I didn’t mean to- if that’s what you want, I’ll go.”

Loki’s back is still against the door. He has his own coat unfastened and one arm out of it. He’s breathing way too fast; he can feel the tears coming. _Don’t do anything stupid_ , the Leah in his head warns. “It’s not what I want,” he admits, swallowing hard. “It’s just-.” He laughs. It isn’t funny. “I suck at this, you know?”

He can actually see the tension drain out of Thor’s face. It’s the weirdest thing.

Thor laughs, too. “Maybe we should talk first,” he says, “rather than falling into bed and regretting it later.”

“I don’t think I would regret it later,” Loki tries. All talking ever gets him is heartache and tears. And too much wine.

“Riiight.” Thor cocks an eyebrow at him. “Because you don’t look like you’re regretting it _now_ or anything.”

Loki’s regretting a lot of things just now, none of them this. At least, not the part that happened before his brain took the wheel and steered them straight into a bridge abutment. “Can we talk in the bath? It’s nice. Relaxing.”

It could be a cheap ploy; he isn’t certain. He’s rather surprised when Thor agrees.

~

“This is nice.” Thor looks around the bathroom. Like the rest of the hotel it’s too minimalist for Loki’s tastes, but the tub itself is big and comfy. There’s room enough for two tall people as long as they plan it right. Thor eyes the chrome rack full of soaps and shampoos and oils. He picks one up and smells it. “Mm. Go ahead… get in, and I’ll wash your hair for you. Or give you a backrub. And we can talk,” he reminds. Loki makes a face at him; Thor ignores it. “Here.” He reaches for the top button of Loki’s shirt. “Let me help you with that.”

Loki settles onto the side of the tub, taking Thor’s hands down with him. He lets Thor unbutton his shirt – carefully, gently – as he starts the water and drops the stopper into the drain. Its chain lands with a muffled clink. Loki shivers.

“Gods, look at you.” Thor runs the pad of one thumb over Loki’s pectoral and across a nipple. Loki shuts his eyes and wonders if maybe this won’t be such a bad talk after all. “Stand up for a moment and let’s get the rest of these clothes off you.” Loki does as he’s told without opening his eyes, one hand on the cold tile to steady himself as Thor unfastens his belt and trousers and guides them down around his ankles. He’s still half-hard despite everything. Thor runs a finger through his pubic hair as his pants slide down, but (sadly) doesn’t linger.

After that all the action is down at his feet. Thor has him balance first on one and then the other, slipping off his shoes and letting him step out of his clothing. “Gods,” Thor whispers again, voice rough. “Here, get in the tub before I- before I can’t let you.”

Loki opens his eyes. He’s used to being worshipped from afar - not from inches away, in a hotel bathroom – and he’s not quite sure what to do with it. He climbs carefully into the tub and sits down. The water is just too warm, enough that his feet and rear are tingling. “Ahh,” he sighs as he settles back against the sloping end. “Nice.” He sighs again and frowns. “Go ahead. Talk at me.”

“You always were a little shit,” Thor kids. His voice is still a bit husky. He has way too many clothes on, though, so Loki closes both eyes again and tries pretending. “I don’t want to talk about anything bad,” Thor insists. “I just think we should know what we want before we get too crazy. And I really do want to give you a backrub.”

Somewhere along the line they’d gone and grown up, apparently. Loki isn’t sure where all this un-Thor-like self-control came from. The water is above his hipbones now, lapping at his belly. “Use the dark oil,” he suggests. He’d smelled all of them earlier; that one is rich and full of cocoa. They can worry about wiping it off the tub later.

“Mm, nice. Let me get a robe,” Thor says. “This one looks like it could get messy.”

_Robe_ sounds more promising; _messy_ does too. Loki cracks an eye open and watches through his lashes – he should have washed his face first; his mascara is going to end up everywhere, and that’s only a good look on a certain few rock stars – as Thor very efficiently and purposefully disrobes. All those lovely muscles look even nicer in the flesh, at least for a brief moment before they’re hidden beneath a spa robe. “Here,” Thor says, kneeling at the side of the tub. “Turn around for me.”

~

Thor’s hands are warm and slick and so, so strong. The water is even warmer; every time it starts to get a shade too cool, Thor takes care of letting a little out and topping things off with another good shot from the hot tap. Loki is a weird mix of sleepy and tipsy and low-grade horny, head on his forearms and back – above and below the waterline – bared to Thor’s ministrations.

Even so talking isn’t terrible, actually. At first it’s mostly Thor telling stories while Loki hums and nods; it isn’t until the third or fourth time Thor’s topped off the tub that he starts asking questions. By that point, Loki’s too relaxed to get really panicky.

The questions themselves aren’t easy: If it hadn’t been for Aes, what would Loki be planning on doing with his life? Does he think working for Aes will be difficult, now that there’s something between them? Which is more important to him, his modeling career or the people he cares about? Had he been looking for a relationship? Where does he see this all going?

Each time Loki’s guardedly honest. These aren’t the kinds of things he can improve by lying. Especially not with Thor’s broad hands making their way slowly up and down, from his shoulders to the flattened curves where his buttocks press against the tub’s unyielding surface. The work questions are straightforward enough. He’s late in his career, from the standpoint of traditional modeling, and has been looking to travel less. He doesn’t think Aes will be weird, except perhaps for Odin. Besides, he’s saved more money than people might expect; worse case, he could go into early retirement. And then do something less exotic when the boredom set in, obviously.

The personal ones are harder. The whole time he’s been modeling, there’s really not been anyone _in_ his life to prioritize. Leah’s part of his work, so he hasn’t been forced to choose there… and things with Leah are- different, anyway. He absolutely hadn’t been looking for a relationship; the opposite, if anything.

“I’m hoping this is going towards you joining me in here,” Loki teases after that last one. “As much as I’m loving this,” he adds, wriggling under Thor’s palms, “I’d like it better if I could use you as a giant cushion.” He would, too. The idea of leaning back against Thor’s chest and letting the water lull him into oblivion is even more appealing than crawling out and going to bed at this point.

“And maybe I will,” Thor shoots back, “as soon as you actually answer my question.”

Loki groans. There’s probably nothing in the world he hates more than feeling vulnerable. “I don’t ever want to be apart from you again,” he whispers, into his own arm.

Thankfully, Thor doesn’t ask him to repeat it.

~

They curl up together in the tub, almost dozing and finally _not_ talking, until Thor takes Loki’s hand and holds it up in front of them. “You’re too prune-y.” he points out, “and it has to be getting awfully late.” Neither of them can reach their phones from the tub, but Loki knows Thor’s right and doesn’t try to argue. “We should get to bed. May- is it okay if I stay?”

Of course Thor can. He does. Despite the lateness and their damp, relaxed exhaustion, snuggling together in Loki’s big bed is enough to reignite a bit of their earlier passion. When Thor slicks a hand and reaches between them, offering to bring them off together like he’d so often done when they were teens, Loki lets him.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Settling down is tricky.

~~o~~  
Nykirke, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

"This is nice." Leah spins slowly in the middle of Loki's new(ish) living room. Well, it's one end of the only room, really; the little wooden house is hardly more than a cottage, with an open floor plan downstairs and two small sleeping lofts above. Much of the front is glass, probably a relatively modern addition. Consequently Loki has already claimed the smaller west-facing loft for his own. Guests - if he ever actually has any - can spend their nights in the comparatively spacious (but windowless) rear loft, meaning they'll be able to get to the small wooden dresser without having to crawl across the bed to reach it. "I like it." She turns again and stops to face the stone mantel. "It's kind of- Alpine, I guess. Not what I’m used to seeing in this part of Norway."

Loki smiles. It does look like a miniature mountain lodge, now that he thinks about it. When he'd initially found this place it had been revoltingly bright and cheery, all yellow and white and cornflower blue. Checks. Ruffles. He'd asked the interior designer to make it dark and ancient looking, to go with the centuries-old exposed wood, and had ended up with rich green-black walls and deep charcoal-and-black upholstered furnishings. As a young adult he would have pictured leather, like the old-fashioned men's clubs he'd seen in New York, but these days he's doing his best to leave a lighter footprint. "I'm glad. You're my first visitor," he babbles without thinking and then just as quickly regrets it. “It's nice to get an outside opinion."

"This must have the best sunsets," Leah notes, twisting to look back out over the yard to the woods below. "What does Thor think? He loves the view, doesn't he?"

"Um," Loki stalls, and Leah snaps back around to eye him suspiciously. "He hasn't seen it." More to the point, Thor doesn't know it exists, but he can't tell her that. "You're right, though," he cuts her off before she can comment. "When he does, he'll be really pleased about those windows."

"Loki!" Leah glares at him. "You rented a place down here without him even seeing it? Why would you even think that was okay?"

He clears his throat. "Bought," he corrects her. He'd paid cash for the place, and the renovations. And, of course, made sure his perfect cleaning woman was willing to come all the way down to Nykirke. It's less than an hour's drive out of Oslo (in good weather) and he's committed to compensating her even more handsomely than before, but not having her here would have been a showstopper. "Like I said," he goes on, “I need to know if I can live out here."

Leah peers at him oddly, her lips pursed. He has to fight not to reach up and feel to see if he’s sprouting a second head or something. "Seriously? You bought a house in Thor's neighborhood and you didn't even tell him?" She shakes her head. "You really are crazy, aren't you?"

"It's not his neighborhood," Loki counters. There's no point in debating the sorry state of his sanity. Which is less sorry than it once was, actually. Or the way she reads him like an open book. "He lives way the fuck over in Sem."

"Oh, riggght." Leah rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. "That must be, what, just beyond easy walking distance? How silly of me."

"I just want to be sure." Loki frowns. Maybe it _is_ crazy to be so careful. Either way, he knows he needs it. "I don't want to lead anyone on this time. He would do the same for me," he insists when she snorts. "He's told me so. He stopped dating years ago when he realized nothing had any future."

Leah rolls her eyes again. Loki looks away. "Okay, walk me back through that logic," she says. "I missed the part where not dating when you're not ready somehow equates to stealth-home-buying."

"It's a cottage," Loki points out. "It's not like I'm living here permanently."

"Don't even. You've been out here for three months now. Are you two taking a break or something?"

They aren't. They've gotten their schedules close enough to under control that they can get together every week or so, and almost every week they've made it happen. It’s handy being so nearby, even though it’s meant a few hurried trips back up to Oslo so he _wouldn’t be the one doing all the driving_. "Of course not," he grumbles. "I love him."

She walks past Loki to the kitchen counter and starts digging the makings of a nice, fresh-looking salad out of her bags. "Maybe it's just me," she says, "but I have to imagine he'd like to see you show that by trying to be a little more honest."

"I'm going to tell him," Loki mutters. He is. He will.

"What, on your deathbed?"

"No!" He's got it all planned out in his head, except for the part where he can see Thor being okay with it. "Soon. After Darcy and Odin agree on my contract." At least Leah isn't annoyed enough to stomp out without eating this time. Then again, the fact that he isn't (often) living right around the corner from her apartment might be a factor there.

"Maybe I should just invite him over," she threatens, reaching for the phone. She has one of his big knives in her other hand; much as he wants to, he doesn't dare try to stop her. "Because knowing you, ten years from now you’ll still be one good excuse away from confessing."

Loki holds his breath until she lets her hand drop back to the lettuce she's chopping. He's so tense it's painful. "Please don't," he whispers. "I promise. I'll tell him."

She sighs. "I can't decide for you what you should or shouldn't do," she says. "You know Thor - and the situation - a whole lot better than I ever will. But you need to figure out what you want and go for it. All this waffling- well, it really can’t be helping."

~

They have a little more wine than is strictly prudent, considering Leah had been planning to drive back to Oslo. She falls asleep on the sofa with all her clothes on. As Loki tucks a blanket in around her, stumbling a bit but managing not to wake her, he's a little sad that the guest loft won't get a proper testing.

~

Three days later, while Loki is sprawled on that same sofa watching the sun dip below the trees, his cell phone rings. _Darcy_. Loki groans... he's been running every afternoon, and doing calisthenics like he’s found religion, but it's likely none of that counts from Natasha's perspective. "Aes likes me a little less cut," he insists before saying hello. "I don't need to come in for gym time."

Darcy laughs, long and loud. "Aes likes you all to themselves," she counters, "but they've finally agreed to art photography. As long as it doesn't advertise a competitor's goods, and isn't actively pornographic. So," she continues, sharp and chipper, "this is the part where you tell me all the things you owe me. Really, Loki. Because I got you everything you wanted, baby."

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Loki drives up into the city to sign his sections of the contract. He spends two beautifully lonely nights there, out on his amazing patio, gazing out at the lights of Oslo and letting his mind wander. The second evening, when Thor texts, Loki knocks back the rest of the courage he's been sipping and calls instead. "Hey," he says when Thor answers, sounding worried. "Do you have a few minutes? I want- I need to tell you something."

~

"You didn't feel like making things weird," Thor repeats, sounding more stunned than resigned just yet, "so you bought a house outside of Tonsberg."

It all makes sense inside his own head. It does. Honest. "Do you hate me?" Loki's throat feels tight, as though someone's big hands are wrapped around it. He shuts his eyes and rolls onto one side, burying his face in the lounge chair’s cushion.

"What? No! Of course not. I'm excited, actually." Thor coughs, then laughs, then clears his throat again. "A little sad that you felt you couldn't tell me until now, sure. But still excited. Are you- no," he says, cutting himself off. "I don’t need to ask that. Do you have pictures?"

"What were you going to say? Just now, I mean," Loki prods instead of answering. Of course he has pictures. He isn't sure if he wants to scream or cry or laugh himself stupid. "Tell me."

"I was going to ask if you were there now," Thor admits, softly, "but I didn't want to sound like a creeper."

"It's okay," Loki says, opting for laughing into the upholstery. He sounds crazy, he’s sure. "But I'm not there tonight. For real. I had to come down to the agency-.”

“-to sign my father’s papers,” Thor finishes. “I heard your people agreed to terms. You should have seen Odin and Frigga when the news came. By the time they found me, they were practically bursting with it.”

“So it’s a good thing?” It seems like it should be, but maybe it isn’t.

“Of course it’s a good thing,” Thor says, softly. “Hey, Lo, are you okay? Should I come to Oslo?”

It’s a really appealing thought but he’s a grown man. He shouldn’t- _doesn’t_ need to be treated like a spoiled child. “You should sleep,” he tells Thor. He’s done enough lying this year already. “I’ll be coming back down to the new place in the morning.”

“Send me pictures,” Thor reminds Loki, in that tone of voice that usually means he’s got a lot more on his mind that he isn’t saying.

“I will,” Loki promises. He takes a deep breath. “But you should come see it yourself, in person.”

~~o~~  
Nykirke, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

“This is perfect!” Thor lays the big bouquet of red roses and the equally beautiful wrapped gift box down on the kitchen counter and hurries over to wrap both arms around Loki. “Gorgeous. I love it!”

“You haven’t even seen most of it,” Loki says, play-struggling against Thor’s grip and laughing. “You’re just ass-kissing now, honestly.”

“It has you in it,” Thor tells him, rubbing a slightly-too-cool nose into the hollow beneath his ear. “What else could it possibly need?”

“Just stop.” Loki shoves Thor away for real this time. “You’re such a sap. Let me give you a tour and then you can tell me what you actually think.”

“Fine,” Thor says. He pouts. Loki carefully doesn’t fall for it. “But I’m still going to think it’s perfect.” Loki sighs loudly and gives his hand a tug.

“It’s going to be cloudy tonight, unfortunately,” Loki tells Thor as they stand by the big windows, “but otherwise this place” – he almost says “my place,” but that’s probably not a good approach – “gets some really nice sunsets. Not just down here, but up in the bedroom, too.” He hadn’t meant that the way it must have sounded, going by Thor’s pleased hum. He can feel his face flushing.

“Mm.” Thor steps closer again and nuzzles Loki’s neck. “Let’s put those roses in some water, and then you can take me upstairs and show me.”

~

Originally, the only route to either loft had been an upright ladder affixed to the wall between them. Loki had decided early on – when he couldn’t stop worrying about falling to his utterly undignified death on the way to use the bathroom – that twin spiral staircases were (both more visually appealing and) safer. Each loft now has its own, two twists of dark wood held together with black metal.

He’s pleased to find Thor can navigate the turns without difficulty.

Even while planting kisses all up and down the length of Loki’s spine.

“Nice,” Thor says, looking around the little space. The roof has enough of a pitch that they can both stand towards the center; closer to the edges Loki’s had to quickly learn to be more careful. A few good bumps to the head will do that. “Now, let me see how it looks with your clothes off.”

“What?” In hindsight, Loki can see he’s been too nervous to really catch the very obvious clues Thor’s been leaving. He rubs his face with both hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it probably sounded. I’ve been all up in my head freaking out here.”

“I know,” Thor says, smiling back at him. “So, take off your clothes and let me fix that for you.”

It’s a lovely bed, with the perfect hard-soft mattress and the softest sheets Loki could find anywhere. The two of them have their first, well, what teenaged Loki always insisted on calling sex-sex – even though Thor had assured him time and time again that _the other stuff_ counted too – in years sprawled all across it. Right in the middle of the afternoon. They’re clumsy and slow at first, and then so fast it’s embarrassing.

Afterwards Thor actually apologizes; Loki snorts and reminds him that suffering from stupid, baseless guilt isn’t his job in this relationship.

They lie quietly for a few minutes. Loki counts the boards that line his ceiling. “I think we need to practice that more,” Thor says sleepily into the skin just below his left nipple, where the flat plane of muscle gives way to the ridges of his ribs. “But the house is still perfect. See? I told you so.”

Loki gives Thor a playful little thwack on the shoulder. It’s nowhere near enough to move him.

Which is good; Loki doesn’t really want to.

~

He makes himself wait until after dinner – alone and surprisingly lonely; Thor had offered to go back down to Sem, and Loki stubbornly wasn’t going to be the one to beg him to not to… only to realize, belatedly and stupidly, that as the host it was his duty to do the inviting – to open Thor’s gift.

The woolen throw, one of Frigga’s own from the handwritten tag, is lovely. How Thor guessed that charcoal and black would be the right colors for the new house, Loki has no idea. But it’s the tiny gold-framed plaque – “Hjem,” it reads, for home, in perfect hand-drawn calligraphy – that makes him cry.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life is hilly, just like Sem.

~~o~~  
Nykirke, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Over time Loki finds himself beginning to adjust to life on the outskirts of Tonsberg. When he goes into a shop and feels someone staring, which actually happens quite a bit more often than he'd anticipated, he’s learning to remind himself that it's because he's famous and not because _people know_ about him. The ghost of his family seems to have vanished from everyone's mind but his own. And even there, it's fading.

He goes to Oslo nearly once a week and spends the night at his apartment more often than not. And while he occasionally catches a play or a concert, he's far more apt to enjoy his time alone (or to have dinner with Leah, just to shake things up a little).

Darcy works out a deal with Natasha, who supplies him with a series of routines he can do at home. He stocks up on free weights - with a nice rack to hold them, not one of those crappy cheap-gym models - and beats himself up every couple of days in front of his big windows and his amazing view. Every three weeks he checks in at Natasha's studio so she can see if his work passes muster; every six weeks she gives him a new program. His house is too small - or, at least, his views on decor too rigid - for a treadmill, but he lets Natasha (via Leah) talk him into buying a decent touring bike and putting it on a trainer. Any time the weather is too- well, too hot or cold or wet or blustery to run, he (marches around his living room bitching loudly for a few minutes and then gives in and) hops on to get in some cardio.

In other words staying fit is a little more challenging away from the city, but in return Nykirke offers far fewer temptations. At least, not the sort that cling to his waistline. Because although Thor hasn't exactly moved in with him, Loki’s nice bed with its nicer view is seeing a good amount of action. And if they aren't quite the randy young goats they were in their mid-teens, well, they've found plenty of creative ways to make up for it. And the sense of urgency certainly isn't gone... they've both seen how life can change when you least expect it.

Working exclusively for Aes - interspersed with, yes, the occasional art shoot that had nothing to do with rolling hills or pastures or soft, lovely woolens - is nice, really. Nicer than he expected. It's been months since he last boarded a plane, and even that was just to go model for Thor at a show in Sweden. He's still in print everywhere; if anything, the limits of his contract have made his work more popular than ever.

Adjusting to dealing with Thor's parents is coming along as well, for all that it's taking a little longer. Frigga is her old self, warm and open and caring, but letting himself sink into the depths of her protective love invariably leaves Loki feeling like a child again. He hates that, to the very core of his being... but can't find a way to explain it that doesn't sound awful. In the end he finds himself having to avoid her more than he ought to. Fortunately, she must sense his discomfort; she never presses beyond what he's willing and able to offer.

Odin is all business, with only the smallest side of _hey, look, this is my son's partner_. It's both welcome and strange. When Loki lived full time in Oslo, the girls (and the occasional boy) at the agency navigated all of the administrative dealings; he simply isn't used to handling work transitions grownup to grownup. If nothing else, on the relatively rare occasion they all get together for brunch or dinner, it gives him and Odin something to talk about.

And Thor seems happy with what the two of them have. Whatever it is. He never tries for less or pushes for more.

Given that the latter is exactly what Loki has asked for, it shouldn't make him sad. Every now and then, though, it does anyway.

~

At the very tail end of summer, just before the harvest when the days are beginning to noticeably shorten, Odin throws an impromptu company party. It's been Aes’ most productive, successful year to date, Thor explains, and his father wants to give something back to the people who've helped make that happen. "You don't have to come if you don't want to," he assures, "but I know the staff would love it if you can. And I would too," he's quick to offer after a look at Loki’s face, “but you can still tell me no. Really.”

Loki winces; he hates being read so easily, especially when the reading is so fucking accurate. "I suppose.” He sighs. The people he's met on his shoots, and while wandering about with Thor, have been pleasant and gentle. Even if he isn't the friend-making sort. He probably shouldn’t be such an asshole. And it’s just a stupid party.

Thor's brilliant grin - not to mention what he does with that luscious mouth of his afterwards - makes just about anything worth it.

Just about.

~~o~~  
Sem, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

The party itself is fine, as outdoor country parties go. Odin has hired a perfectly serviceable caterer, and there's dancing under the strings of twinkling lights at nightfall. It isn't until Loki’s stopped for a breather and is sipping something cold and gin-tasting (while Thor schmoozes with the barn supervisor across the way) that he spots her: a older, tired-looking woman with sad eyes who looks away whenever he catches her watching. His stomach sinks; even after all these years he _knows_ her. She takes care of sick people. _His_ sick people.

"Why is she here," he hisses as Frigga steps up beside him at the bar. "You've no need of a caregiver." He's in real danger of losing his composure.

Frigga frowns. "She's married to one of our mechanics," she explains, and then turns back to face him with an expression of growing worry. "She took care of your mother, didn't she? It was such a long time ago, but I do remember seeing her at your father's funeral."

Loki can't speak for a moment. His brain won't process what Frigga is saying. "My fa- my _what_?" His voice is all weird. Scratchy. And then he _gets_ what he heard. It takes him a couple of seconds to realize that the bright tinkle of broken glass is his own tumbler falling.

"Thor," Loki hears Frigga call as he whirls away and sprints off into the darkness.

~

He yanks the side door of the ewe barn open and hops inside, then forces himself to close it more carefully behind him. The sheep are already snuffling and moving around, no doubt surprised to have a visitor so late; there's no reason to startle the poor things further. He hums softly to them as he makes his blind, careful way along the wooden catwalk and then drops into the last pen on the right. Two ewes huff and scramble to their feet. Loki sits down, heedless of his good clothes, and makes soothing noises until they settle back in around him. It's only then, flopped in the straw with a sheep as his backrest, that he really lets himself cry.

None of it makes any sense. He's known his father must be dead for years now, and not given a fuck even longer. Loki curses and slams a fist into his own thigh, then just as quickly apologizes when his wooly neighbors complain and shift around him. He should be happy; it's fitting. It's what he wanted. And yet here he is, hurt and broken and sobbing. In stinky sheep shit, just to make it all that much better.

~

"Sir? Hey mister? Are you okay?"

Loki blinks and tries to sit. His world smells powerfully ripe and oily. His eyes are puffy; he aches everywhere. "Wha?" He blinks again. A kid, maybe ten or so, with messy hair and a small rubber bucket. "Where- who are you?"

The kid shuffles his feet uncomfortably. "Sven," he says. "My father lets me feed the girls sometimes. Only when I don't have school. Why are you down there? Did you fall? Did you hurt yourself?"

Loki stifles a groan as he pulls himself up with the catwalk railing. "I came in here last night and must have fallen asleep," he rasps, brushing debris off his clothes. It's hopeless. He's incredibly glad he's fully dressed, though. "It's nothing. I'll get out of your way so you can get on with your work," he adds as Sven looks increasingly uncertain. "Wouldn't want to get anyone in trouble, would we?" He digs in his pockets for his car keys and his phone. Thankfully, everything is where it should be. "See you later," he says as he pushes past Sven and heads for the door. The sheep eat early. With any luck he can make it out of here without getting caught by anybody. Anybody else, anyway.

Yeah, no.

Because there is _Thor_ … perched on the hood of Loki's car, feet on the bumper and head in his hands, looking more upset than Loki's ever seen him.

_Fuck_. Loki tries to wheel about and tiptoe away, but he steps on a stick and its loud snap betrays him. “Hi,” he says. “Uh, I- I was just going back to Nykirke.”

Thor straightens a little. He doesn’t run to Loki. In fact, he doesn’t even climb down off of Loki’s car. “You were going back to Nykirke,” he repeats, flatly. “And you weren’t going to say goodbye or anything?”

Loki looks away. He’s filthy and reeking and has no excuse whatsoever for his own bad behavior. “I didn’t think you knew I was still here.”

“Oh, because you – you, precious diva you – would just walk ten miles home to Nykirke and leave your car here as a souvenir? Does that make any sense to you, Loki?” Thor’s eyes narrow. He’s not sad, then; he’s furious.

Loki’s tired. He’s rattled. And now he’s fucking unwelcome. The last is like a bucket of cold water thrown right in his face. Which, as inevitably as death and rainstorms, turns him straight into a pissed-off cat.

“Look,” Loki says, his hot anger talking when it probably shouldn’t. “I should never have come back here. We should never have tried to do this. You aren’t patient enough, and I have way too much baggage. Fuck, you hardly even know me.”

Thor flinches as if he’s been slapped. “I’m upset because I thought something happened to you and all of the sudden you’re done? That’s it? This- what we have between us means that little to you?” He does step down off the car this time. “Or is this just you- what, panicking?”

“You _don’t_ know me,” Loki points out, stubbornly. “You have no idea. When I first went to New York, before I started modeling? I lived in squalor. I was a _hooker_ , Thor. I fucked people for money.” He’s shouting. He probably looks ridiculous, on top of everything else, and isn’t that fucking typical? “Is that the kind of person you want to spend the rest of your life with?”

Thor wipes his eyes. He frowns at Loki; he looks concerned now, more than angry, but Loki’s in no mood to see it. “You were my best friend all through childhood,” he tells Loki, voice soft enough that Loki has to fight to hear him. “You love animals. You got tired of New York and came back to Norway. You’re easily the most beautiful man I’ve every known… and you’re impulsive and sweet and funny. I _do_ know you. The past is the past. I don’t care what you’ve done, okay?” Thor stops for a moment, evidently noting that Loki has ceased screeching and started bawling. He takes a deep breath, chest stretching the fabric of his shirt, and lets it out slowly. “Hey, I’m sure we’re both exhausted. Once we’ve slept, let’s do this over. But- what’s really wrong, Lo?”

Loki’s crying so hard he has to sit down. In the dirt. Which hardly matters, considering he spent the night in with the sheep. “If you and your mother _love me so much_ ,” he wails, “why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“Tell you?” Thor scrunches his nose and looks puzzled. “I’m sorry.” He coughs. “I don’t- I’m not sure what you mean.”

Loki starts to wipe his face on his arm and quickly thinks the better of it. “I heard Frigga call for you,” he says. “Last night. You expect me to believe she didn’t tell you?”

“All she said was- _oh, shit_.” Thor’s confused expression vanishes abruptly, only to be replaced by one of rapidly growing horror. “You didn’t know? Honestly?”

“How would I?” Loki has no idea what he’s feeling, besides dead on his feet. On his ass, actually. “I was gone. Supposedly buried. Who exactly was going to tell me?”

Thor reaches both hands out for him. “You never asked. I just assumed. Oh, Lo, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Loki says. Which probably makes no sense and sounds insane, given how he’d just been on a rant about no one caring. He doesn’t stand back up, doesn’t step into Thor’s arms. He’s filthy. “It’s what I- oh, hell. I don’t even know what upset me.”

Thor takes another step towards Loki and drops to his knees in the dirty grass. He wraps Loki in a huge hug and doesn’t say a single thing about _filthy_ or _shit_ or _reeking_. In fact, he doesn’t say anything at all for a long, long time. And when he does, it’s just “can I give you a ride home?”

“I don’t need-,” Loki tries to protest, weakly.

“Oh, I know,” Thor assures him. “But we could take one of the trucks. That way you wouldn’t get – um, you know – in your car.”

Loki tries to smile. He’s too gross for a truck, even. “You’ll need a tarp,” he warns. “I don’t think it’s humanly possible to be more dirty.”

Thor actually laughs, and Loki feels- the first tiny hints of _warm inside_. “Oh, it definitely is. Trust me.”


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are many ways to convey a message.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

When he still can't catch his breath three days after the whole ill-fated mess at Odin's company party Loki - without a word to anyone, because wrong or right he needs to know he has the right to behave as self-protectively (yes, selfishly) as any given situation warrants - flees back to Oslo.

The first few nights in the city he keeps busy, filling his spare time with events jam-packed with people who won't ask too many painful questions: a gallery opening for one of his favorite photographers, complete with the good champagne and the really good caviar; dinner with another photographer, her editor, and the publisher's rep for her latest book; late-night clubbing with a bunch of agency models, which ultimately boils down to too much drinking, too much dancing, and way, way too much moping about feeling old and alone. The kids - because they _are_ kids, fresh-faced and stick-thin and still awed to even be here - invite him along to a late-night afterparty, but Loki passes. He hates having to feel patronized, or pitied, and while he's not sure what his future holds he doesn't think he's quite ready to throw everything (he might not have anymore anyway) in the garbage. Not just yet.

A week or so in the edge is off his frantic stress; Loki settles back into something a little closer to normal. He checks in with Natasha and gets an updated workout routine, one that will balance his distance-runner's hamstrings with some solid quad and calf work, and it's fine. She's not the sort that pries. He stops at the agency when he knows Darcy won't be working and then has one of the drivers take him grocery shopping so he won't be quite so ridiculously reliant on delivered food.

And then he goes back to his apartment for a little quiet, solo alfresco dining. Yet again, Thor calls; yet again, Loki doesn't take it. Two nights after he’d left the greater Tonsberg area - once Thor had threatened to call the authorities or, worse, Leah and Darcy - Loki had sent a short email explaining that he (was indeed still alive, but) needed some time to think... alone. Before and after that he had been and still is ignoring everybody. Well, everyThor, anyway.

Loki gets it that none of this is Thor's _fault_ , exactly. He does. With the history they share, of course Thor would worry when he disappeared into the darkness after something odd had happened. And Thor's whole family has lived here pretty much forever, centuries and centuries, since some unconventional Viking ancestor turned away from the sea and settled down to farm... it's hardly surprising they wouldn't be able to fathom how a person like Loki might end up completely cut off from the town's grapevine. They don't even have any concept of what it's like to leave, let alone to "die" and disappear completely.

The more Loki thinks about it, honestly, the less he's able to stay angry. But he finds himself missing the old days, the days when he was dead inside and nothing mattered. Caring is hard. Loving is hard. Being loved, with all the burdens and expectations it brings, is even harder.

Losing Thor feels easier than endlessly disappointing him.

~

Around the three-week mark Darcy gets wind of Loki's return and sends Leah after him. Leah, who comes armed with fish stew and good bread to ask if he wants to talk. He doesn't. "You're still under contract with Aes," she reminds him when they can't seem to get any sort of conversation going. It’s not like he's forgetting. "You’re going to need to make a decision. They're going to want you back in Tonsberg soon for the coming season."

"Don't worry; I'll be honoring our deal," he says, flatly, even though he hasn't begun to figure out the logistics. "I will. I promise." Whatever else he's feeling, he can't get his responsibility to those happy, well-kept sheep out of his system.

He and Leah ultimately make an early evening of it. She can't lure his secrets out of him, and anything else they try to discuss is- strained. Uncomfortable. It isn't any fun, not for either of them, and she looks sad and worried when she leaves.

Life was easier when _that_ didn't bother him either.

Late that night Loki finally feels up to listening to some of Thor's many, many voicemails... one for every night he hasn't been ho- near Sem. They're all, as it turns out, variations on the same little theme: "Hope you had a nice day today, love you, miss you."

He and Thor are both so, so lonely.

Loki listens to every single message twice. He doesn't sit out on his patio and gaze out at the stars when he's done, either. Instead he curls up in bed and cries.

_i love you too_ , he texts Thor the next morning, _but i'm just not ready._ For what, he isn't sure. Anything. Everything.

_it's okay_ , Thor sends back after an hour or so, an hour Loki spends pacing and cursing and choking back tears… even after he realizes this is the time of day Thor normally checks in on the lambs. When Loki doesn’t respond, Thor follows up with _take all the time you need_.

Oddly, it only takes a day or so after that for Loki to go completely stir-crazy. By the weekend, his ass is on the train.

~~o~~  
Sem, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Finding Laufey is so easy.

Loki’d expected it to involve a little more sleuthing, really. He probably shouldn't have; it’s not like there are tons of burial grounds in and around Sem, and he does know the name of the place where his mother is buried. Even though he’s only been there once, the day of her funeral. Once he walks through the gate, everything looks familiar; he only needs a few minutes to find her grave.

It does stand to reason that the tombstone right beside hers would be Laufey's. His father had adored Farbauti and would have wanted to be with her in death; Farbauti, for her part, would have been far too tradition-steeped to have considered preventing it. And who knows... maybe in her own way she'd loved her husband right back.

Maybe he can accept the idea that this is what they would both have wanted.

Loki squats down to dig a few stray leaves out from in front of Farbauti’s marker. He traces the lettering carved into first his mother’s and then Laufey’s stones with his fingers. Both feel exactly the same against his hands; cold and rough. Laufey’s stone is simple: name, dates of birth and death... the last only a year and half after he himself had left Paris.

A sob catches Loki by surprise and half-chokes him. It hadn't seemed it at the time, but he older and wiser and he gets it now: They were both so very, very young.

It's a pretty rural cemetery, well-tended and neat. There really isn't much tidying left undone but Loki scrambles back to his feet and vows to do it anyway. He needs to see other families, people who have gone to their deaths at an appropriately ripe old age. Thor's own relatives, maybe; they're here too, somewhere in this peaceful green yard with the hills behind them. For now, though, Loki figures he can just work his way from grave to grave… starting just past his father’s.

The people to his parents' left, he doesn't know. The names don’t even sound familiar, but none of that matters once he sees that they died well into their eighties. He’s more than happy to neaten their plots, and the ones beyond them too. At the end of the row he comes back to start on the stone just past Farbauti's. His breath catches in his throat as soon as he spots the dates; this one died as a teenager. From the date it could easily be someone he once knew from school, or the child of friends of his parents. Loki takes a few seconds to steel himself before he looks at the name, willing it not to belong to anyone he fondly remembers.

He thinks he’s prepared. He’s wrong; he isn't at all ready for what his eyes see. Instead he cries out and scrambles backwards like a deranged crab, only stopping when he smacks his head on one of the stones behind him.

_Loki Laufeyson, min elskede sønn_.

Beloved.

Son.

For a long, long time, long enough that the ground’s dampness begins to seep through the seat of his pants and the skin of his scalp where he bumped his head swells and turns painful, Loki just sits there. His brain is both too empty and too full to function. He can’t reconcile the father he remembers with the idea of one who would- would care this much. And what if his own faked death had somehow contributed to-… _no_.

He really, really can’t let himself go there.

~

Loki ultimately gets his hands and knees back under him and hitches himself closer to- to what? The empty grave of someone too fake, too dishonest to deserve something so touchingly heartfelt. He leans forward and starts clearing away the leaves regardless, not for himself but for two people - parents – who deserve to look like (the) caring people (they apparently were). People who would never leave their _beloved son’s_ burial site unkempt, not if they could help it. He can spare them a few minutes; they gave him everything.

At first he thinks the small stone tucked up against the base of “his” tombstone is there by accident, perhaps thrown by the mower or dropped by someone else’s child. When he turns it over in his hand and sees the tiny ram’s horns scratched into its surface, though, he _knows_ : Thor.

Loki pushes the grass aside and finds another and another, and then he’s clawing wildly along the front of the headstone, ignoring the pain and the dirt ground under his fingernails. There are more stones, many more. One, in fact, for every year since he’d left Europe.

Every year but this one.

They fill the pockets of his jeans.

When he leaves the cemetery, the elderly woman making her slow, careful way towards him smiles sympathetically at his tearstained face. “It’s good of you to come, you know,” she tells him.

It probably isn’t, but of course he doesn’t say so.

~

“Hi.” Loki’s a little surprised Thor’d picked up on the second ring after weeks and weeks of radio silence, although he probably shouldn’t be. “I think I owe you an apology.”

“My mom gave me a lecture,” Thor says, before Loki can continue. “She says I need to trust you, and to accept that you’ll give me everything you can. That I have to understand that I simply can’t pressure, drag, or even coax more than you’re able to give me out of you. She told me I’m only going to hurt you by trying, and that I’m going to find myself empty-handed. Kind of like I am now.” He laughs a little, probably more at himself than anything. “And she’s right. I know it. I can’t change what is. I can’t change you, not that I want to. All I can do is decide whether or not I can live with the situation.”

Loki’s mouth is dry, so dry he can barely get his own words out. This isn’t the conversation he expected to be having, which is in retrospect kind of dumb. Even with someone as stubborn and devoted as Thor, there’s probably a finite limit to the number of times a partner can disappear in a whirlwind of dramatic angst before it all gets too tiring. “And have you?”

“Have I what? Listened to my mother?” Thor laughs harder this time, more like he’s amused and less like he’s angrily bitter. It’s all very confusing.

“No,” Loki forces out, “decided.”

“Oh. Oh, sorry. Man, I’m an ass.” Thor sighs. “Of course. I didn’t even _need_ to decide… I already knew I could live with whatever scraps you were willing to throw me. I don’t- there wasn’t any reason for me to act like I acted. I don’t even know what got into me. I’m- I’m the one who should be apologizing. Is apologizing. Not that you could stand to date anyone this stupid.”

“It’s not that simple,” Loki says. “I need to stop running.”

“And maybe you will,” Thor counters, “if I stop pushing you.”

Loki laughs this time. “I’m not sure freaking out because you were worried about me counts as pushing.”

“It all came out the same in the end, though, didn’t it?”

Thor has a point there. “I guess we could both do a little better,” Loki admits. He takes a couple of deep breaths and then forges on. “I found the stones, you know… the ones at the graveyard.”

“Oh. Shit.” Thor clears his throat. “You- I- you shouldn’t have had to go out there alone.”

“It was fine,” Loki says. It wasn’t, not really, but having Thor with him would probably not have made the experience a better one. “I wanted to see my father’s gravesite. It- it just surprised me a little to find my own.”

Thor snuffles. “I used to pretend you were there with me,” he says softly, “somewhere just out of sight. That when I talked you could hear me. It felt- a little less awful, I guess, and it let me believe I could tell you all the things I wanted to but never had. All the things my selfish teenaged self let slide, because I thought I had forever to say them.” He sniffs again. His voice is thick and wet. “But I didn’t. I don’t. I love you and I want your life to be good, not shitty. Certainly not worse because I’m in it.”

Loki blinks back his own tears. “I don’t think you could make it- anything but better. Now will you let me say I’m sorry?”

“Ugh.” Thor laughs and this time it sounds more like crying. “Are you even listening?”

“Of course, but I’m still sorry.” Loki clears his throat; he sounds as damp as Thor does. “I really do need to- well, learn that I can’t walk away from my problems. They just come right along with me… and then I’m devastated, and you’re not there. It’s dumb. It’s not even self-serving. Think about forgiving me?” He wishes Thor were here in the house with him, to pile his lapful of little stones on the mantle and hug him fiercely.

“I don’t need to think about that. It’s already done. I love you, Lo. Are you in back in Oslo?”

Loki shuts his eyes for a few seconds. “No,” he says. “I’m here at the house in Nykirke. In case you want to stop over. Sometime.”

“Oh,” Thor tells him, voice shaky and full of feeling. “I- I’d love to.”


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Families can be a struggle, even when they don't mean to be.

~~o~~  
Nykirke, Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

"Hello?" It's not a phone number Loki recognizes. Still, it's the fourth call from the same caller in five minutes; something isn’t right, and he figures he'd better answer.

"Oh, good. You’re around." It's Thor, but there's a lot of background noise. He sounds out of breath, or flustered. "Can you do me a favor?"

Something's definitely wrong. This isn't Thor's cell number. In fact, there's none of the irritating little delay that marks it as a mobile phone at all. And Loki can hear people shouting in the distance, over a steady racket of electronic beeps and whirs. "Um, I think so?" It's never the sort of response Thor likes to hear, but Loki can't do any better. "What's go- what's up? Where are you?"

"Tonsberg,” Thor says. “Tonsberg hospital," he clarifies, and Loki leaps up off the sofa. “I’m-.”

"Wait, what?" Loki simply can’t be patient enough to let Thor finish. "What's going on," he blurts out; he doesn't have the- the whatever to rephrase it this time. "Are you okay? Why didn't you call me?"

"I'm fine." Thor doesn't sound fine, even when he laughs. "And I did call you. Am calling you," he corrects. "It's not my fault that you don't answer. Plus that's kind of why I'm calling; my phone died and I don't have a charger on me. I- if it's not too much of a pain, can you bring me one?"

_Tonsberg Hospital_. Ugh. Loki swallows, with considerable effort. He hasn't been there since- since a really, really long time ago. Years and years. So long that the place probably looks completely different now than it does in his head. Not that he has any way of knowing; he hasn't even been able to stomach driving past it.

"Loki? Are you there?" Thor sounds rushed. Worn out, and frazzled. "If you're in the middle of something and you can't make it down over here, that’s okay. I can call one of the guys."

"No." Loki swallows again. Or tries to anyway. He and Thor are _a thing_. A couple. Partners. This is his _job_. "I can. I have a few spare ones here at my place. But are you okay?" He still hasn’t gotten a decent, useful answer.

"Yeah. It's my father," Thor says. "He- collapsed, I guess. I wasn’t there when it happened, and they're not sure what's going on with him. Lots of tests to run, from what they tell me." He clears his throat. It's loud even over the chaos and Loki wonders if he's been crying. "Hopefully they'll find something. Sooner, rather than later."

Okay, no. All of that makes it worse instead of better. Loki's shaking so hard that it's difficult to keep a grip on his own phone. "Is your mother there?"

"No, she's out at the farm," Thor says. "Volstagg's off tonight, and sheep don't care much for people's problems."

Loki makes himself laugh. "I suppose not. Should I go over there and help her?" He's not sure what he can do, but there has to be something. Frigga would do the same thing for him, without question. Has done, many times.

"Would you? That would be- she'll love it. But first," Thor adds and a tiny piece of Loki dies. Ugh. "Please bring me that charger."

_Fuck_. "Should I drop it off at the desk?" He's not sure he can even force his feet to cross the threshold. There's no way he's making it to a room without losing his shit completely. Even if it’s the only way to make sure no one steals the charger outright. He would buy a hundred more just to avoid having to set foot in that stupid hospital.

"What? Sorry, it's so noisy here. Oh, no," Thor goes on before Loki can interrupt to repeat himself. "You don’t have to park. I'll just come meet you outside. Ten minutes?"

Loki looks down at his t-shirt. He’s wearing that, and nothing else. "I need to change first," he says. "Better make it twenty."

~

His fingers aren't working right, and it takes a couple of minutes to dig up the kind of clothes he can work in. In the farming sense, anyway. Once he's finally on the road, there isn't time left for anything but hurrying.

Even so, his teeth chatter as he passes the big, bright sign and turns onto the hospital property.

Thor's standing by the ambulance entrance, hands jammed in his pockets and expression pinched. He's obviously exhausted. And no, the building doesn't look nearly different enough. For a moment, just as Thor spots the car and hurries over, Loki half expects to vomit.

"Sorry to drag you all the way over here, Lo," Thor offers, leaning in through the window to kiss Loki's temple. If he notices that Loki is white as a sheet, he doesn't- well, of course not. He has something much more important, Loki knows, to keep his mind occupied. "You probably have a million things you’d rather be doing. Are you sure you want to go out to the farm?"

What Loki wants, second only to dying on the spot, is to be as far from this awful place as possible. "It's fine," he grits out. "I'm happy to. Unless you want me to park somewhere and stay with you," he adds, now that he's sure it's safe to offer. Thor would never prioritize himself over Frigga.

"No no, I'll be fine," Thor says, just as expected. Even so Loki can barely hide the warm rush of relief. He tries to let the breath he'd been holding out inconspicuously. "Go on over there,” Thor suggests, patting the car gently. “She'll be really happy to see you."

An ambulance honks behind them; both Loki and Thor jump.

Loki isn't even irritated, he's so busy being grateful.

~

By comparison the drive down to the main barn barely rattles him. "Hi," Loki calls out from the open doorway as Frigga squints in his direction. Even backlit he feels kind of dorky in worn jeans and work gloves. "I talked to Thor. I, um, thought you might need- you could use a hand out here. Because I'm sure not two hands when it comes to being useful." He laughs self-consciously, but it’s true. His purpose in life is being decorative. "Anything I can d- oof!"

Saved. Frigga’s hug squishes the rest of whatever idiocy he was going to babble right out of him. When she lets go, brushing straw off his shirt and smiling, her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy. Loki feels abruptly like crying, so much that he has to bite the inside of his cheek hard. Even then, it’s a real struggle to fight the tears down. He reminds himself that, for once, he’s not the one actually having the Really Shitty Day.

"This is the best surprise," Frigga tells him. “The best!” She doesn't ask if he has news. He doesn't, which is probably awful; a good boyfriend would have asked for an update and been a smidgen less self-centered. Still, he’s human; there’s only so much he can do. "I’m so glad to see you! And, yes, you can help me with the dogs," she offers, wiping sweat off her face with the back of a wrist. "Take the blue truck. Olaf's running low on food up in the high pasture." She gives his shoulder a quick squeeze. "And then come back down here," she suggests, "and we’ll figure something out. If nothing else I could use the company."

~

Outside the barn Loki finds the truck in question and opens the driver's side door. He hasn't been behind the wheel of one of these behemoths since he was fourteen or fifteen, and he's probably never backed up… ever... but the huge sacks of kibble are way too heavy to carry all the way out here.

Deep inside he's more grateful than mortified when Frigga helps him sling them up into the truck bed.

Loki drives slowly and carefully. When he finally makes it up to the worn stone barn, all four dogs are done with work for the day. They're flopped around an equally worn-looking shepherd as the truck bounces to a stop, but by the time he’s jumped down out of the truck they’ve scrambled to their feet and rushed over to greet him. He squats down to rub their ears, cooing and pretending nothing’s… out of the ordinary. "Hi, I’m Loki.” He stands but doesn’t put out a hand. “You must be Olaf. Thor had to go into town," he explains as they work together to unfasten the tailgate. He isn’t sure what the workers have been told. Or haven’t. "I'm just giving Mrs. Borson a hand." He nods at Olaf, who almost smiles back at him.

~

He gets out of the high pasture without having to put the truck in reverse – Loki’s pretty sure he’d drive all the way back to Oslo to turn around, if that’s what it took to get down to the main barn without having to back up in front of an audience – and makes it all the way to where he started without screwing up (or running over, or crashing into) anything. Once he has the truck parked, he helps Frigga flake out fresh straw until his shoulders are aching.

Which, of course, is _not_ something he’s planning on admitting to Natasha.

It’s dark by the time they finish. Thor still isn’t back from the hospital. In fact, he hasn’t even texted. Loki swallows down an unpleasant mixture of irritation and fear.

“Heard anything from Thor,” he asks Frigga conversationally as they wash up in the big barn sink, the same one they use for filling buckets. It’s the kind you operate with your feet, the kind where really getting clean requires a fair amount of teamwork. “Hopefully he’s been able to find a place to charge his phone. The battery died,” he explains when Frigga looks at him strangely. “That’s why I- um, I dropped off a charger. At Tonsberg. Um. I have no idea why I’m telling you this.” He laughs. “No idea whatsoever.”

Frigga smiles. Nicely, not like she’s laughing at him. “He’s so happy,” she says. “Thor, that is. Having you here means a lot to him.”

Loki snorts. “I’m sure you could have gotten everything done today without me,” he counters. “Easier, even. When it comes to manual labor I’m not exactly an asset.”

“Nonsense.” Frigga shakes her hands mostly dry and then grabs an old dishtowel from the pile. She offers a second one to Loki. “I really did appreciate the help. But that’s not what I meant. He’s glad to have you back in town, in general. Every day, not just today.”

“Oh.” Loki feels his cheeks heating. He’s abruptly reminded he’s discussing his relationship, whatever it is, with his partner’s _mother_. It’s almost as awkward as backing the truck up in front of Olaf. “I’m glad?” He knows Thor’s pleased to have him here, despite his quirks and insecurities – it would be impossible to spend time with Thor and _not_ know that – and he’s certainly been assured Thor’s parents are fine with the whole business, but that last bit isn’t something he’s sure he believes. “It’s nice living closer, more of the time,” he says, to fill the silence.

She shakes out both towels and hangs them on the rack over the sink to dry. “I should head up to the hospital in a few,” she says. He’s so glad the moment has passed and his interrogation looks to be over. “But first, can I feed you a quick dinner?”

~

They have soup. Loki’s not quite sure what it is, but no matter; it’s delicious. By the time he’s reached the bottom of his bowl, he’s learned that Odin was found unconscious on the office floor earlier. Not by Frigga herself; by a staffer. “I really thought we’d lost him this time,” Frigga says. She dabs at her eyes with her napkin. “I’m sorry. It’s just- it’s scary.”

Loki thinks about what it would be like to find Thor dead. “Yeah,” he agrees, “I’m sure it must be.” He helps her clean up and then walks with her out to their cars. She thanks him again and tells him to drive carefully; he takes a deep breath and says “tell Thor how much I love him.” The hug he gets is worth it.

~

2:08 AM. Loki blinks and rubs his eyes, but nothing changes. The clock still shows the same ridiculous time. He grabs his buzzing phone. Thor, from the usual number. “Hey,” Loki rasps. “Is everything okay?”

“I’m not sure,” Thor says, slowly. “Do you mind if I come over?”

It’s too late. Or too early. Loki’s exhausted and disheveled and in severe need of a shower. He kind of does mind, but it’s the wrong time to say so. “Not as long as you don’t care that I smell like sheep,” he warns.

Thor laughs softly, like it’s only about 5% funny. “No problem. It’ll be just like the old days.”

“Ass,” Loki says. He yawns. He’s so fucking exhausted. “Sure,” he goes on instead, “it’s fine. See you in a few minutes.”

~

By the time Thor arrives Loki has gotten a second wind and has a million questions: what happened, what it’s going to mean to them, whether it’s his fault somehow.

But Thor doesn’t want to talk; he only wants to snuggle. As they drift (back, in Loki’s case) off to sleep, Loki lets him.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki takes on a new role and does surprisingly well with it.
> 
> ~
> 
> _NOTE: There won't be a chapter this coming weekend - I have to work both days_

~~o~~  
Sem (Tonsberg), Norway  
Present day  
~~o~~

Odin's first taste of real, solid food - a few grains of lukewarm rice that the speech and swallowing therapist, not Frigga (and not Loki), scoops up with one of those soft-bite children’s spoons and feeds him - is real cause for celebration. A few more days of things moving in the right direction and perhaps Thor's father can once again be free of all the trappings that make his study look less like a library and more like some weird private torture chamber: the feeding tube neatly capped and curled against the sagging skin of his abdomen, because his flesh hasn't yet adjusted to all the lost weight and has instead left him looking like someone dressed him in an old man's body; the PIC line taped to the inside of one shrunken, scrawny biceps; the ventilator (never) and suction unit (rarely) used since shortly after he'd first come home, but still around just in case things get worse instead of better; the endless catheters and bags and clips and poles.

All the plastic-and-metal things, things that clash with the dark wood and old, leather-bound books and heavy antique furnishings.

Everything that still sets Loki's teeth, each time he enters Odin's makeshift sanctuary. Which is often; keeping Odin company somehow became his day-to-day job quite a while ago, some afternoon when he wasn’t paying enough attention.

It had made reasonably good sense, all things considered. In fact, it probably still does. Thor, Frigga, and of course the regular staff are all better suited than he is to manual labor (not that Loki couldn't be, if he had to, but that would interfere with staying _perfect_ for his actual job... and he rather likes being a bit pretty sometimes, on the outside at least, so - as much as he pisses and moans about being treated like a delicate flower - he's secretly glad that no one has pressed the issue). On top of that, Loki really loves to read. It had been unexpectedly fortuitousness that Odin - even early on, when no one was sure the man would ever wake again - had somehow found Loki's storytelling voice soothing.

Reading to Thor’s father wasn't a bad pro bono job, as long as Loki stayed focused. He liked to keep the room as dimly lit as possible, with a reading light trained directly on the book spread before him... that way, he could nearly tune out the awful machines and the blanket-covered lump that had once been Odin.

Once or twice (okay, twice), when he hadn't felt like reading and Odin's various bags and gadgets had been neatly hidden by this or that Aes throw, Loki had found himself (dangerously) emboldened. He'd pulled a chair right up to Odin's bedside and talked, really talked: about how he'd always felt like an outsider as a child in this big house, where Odin held court and everyone else cowered; how Odin's thinly-veiled homophobia had brought (and continues to bring) strain to his and Thor's relationship; how, no matter what he did, Loki never felt like more than the worst sort of failure.

The first time, there’d been no reaction at all from the silent man lying beside him.

Later on, Loki’d felt brave again and done it a second time (which had also been the last time; afterwards, and even now, he’d felt far too guilty to continue) and Odin had reacted in mute, purposeless distress, thrashing about until Loki’d had to go find Frigga. "What happened?" Her worried face as she'd struggled to soothe and calm her husband had only left him feeling all that much guiltier, but his only real choice had been to lie about it.

"I'm not sure," Loki'd told her, relieved to find the low light had allowed at least a little bit of hiding. "Maybe he just didn't like the story I was telling."

Okay, looking back at the whole mess, maybe he hadn’t lied after all.

~

Shortly after the ambulance had deposited Odin at the farm Thor and Frigga had engaged a physical therapist to stop out every (week)day. It would always be important, the doctors at the hospital had explained (and Thor had recounted; Loki had kept _hospital time_ to a minimum), to work Odin's arms and legs… to keep the muscles stretched and the joints limber. "Stroke patients sometimes surprise their doctors," Frigga'd told Loki (despite how he'd carefully avoided asking about it) a few days later. "We wouldn't want him to wake up and find we hadn't been taking good care of him, would we?"

"He- he'll never think that," Loki'd assured her, playing along. Personally, he’d had his doubts, what with karma and all... but he’d certainly agreed that, if Odin ever were to wake up, he fervently did hope the man would remember absolutely nothing.

On the weekends, days when the therapist wouldn’t be coming by, Frigga herself had taken over. She'd worked Odin's increasingly wasted limbs with endless gentleness and spent hour after hour rubbing oil into his skin, all the while softly to him. Even then, she’d encouraged Loki to come by and read. "He misses you," she'd said when Loki'd protested weakly about being in the way. "There's something about your voice, maybe… something the rest of us just can't give him."

And so Loki, normally the last one to respond to heartfelt pleas or comply with orders, had ultimately found himself at the farm day in and day out for the whole of Odin’s initial convalescence.

~

It had almost literally startled the crap out of him. One otherwise normal afternoon Loki'd looked up from his reading to find Odin - still silent, still essentially motionless - with one pale eye trained on him. "Guh! Uh, hi. Ow!" His forgotten book had slipped from his fingers and landed hard on his instep, and his thin sock had done exactly nothing to soften the blow. "Shit. Hi," he'd tried again as he'd scrambled to his feet in a bit of a panic. "Just let- hold on and I'll get you someone."

"Really? He _looked_ at you? He’s awake? Oh, goodness." Frigga had raced on ahead of (agitated, shaking) Loki as they’d made their way from the barn back down to the house. "Thank you!"

Loki hadn't been at all sure he'd deserved thanking. Just the same, he’d known it wouldn't be right to argue.

~

That evening had been a memorable one, from every perspective. Frigga’d pulled together a little impromptu party – nothing structured, just a few close friends rounded up for snacks and toasting – and they'd all stayed up so late celebrating that Loki'd ended up staying the night (not at the main house, at Thor's; he hadn’t lost his mind completely).

Even though Thor'd long ago had one of the outbuildings (the staffs’ quarters, with its simple architecture and cozy spaces) lovingly converted into his own private home - so it wasn't like they were curling up in his childhood bed, just a room away from Frigga's - it had been- weird. Uncomfortable. Awkward. Long after Thor'd fallen fast asleep, Loki'd lain awake staring blankly at the ceiling.

Thor'd made it up to him, though. They’d _taken the next weekend off_ and spent a lovely two days relaxing up at the Oslo apartment. Still, "me too," Loki'd been very surprised to find himself thinking when Thor'd remarked that (it had been a pleasant break but that) it would be (equally) nice to be back in Sem. Because he hadn't been sure _what_ the fuck had come over him, Loki’d carefully just shrugged and said nothing.

~

Over the months since that weekend, Odin has made remarkable progress. He's able to speak again, and most of the time Loki can even understand him. While his one eyelid still droops, especially when he's tired (which is most of the time, from what Loki can tell; the path back from _nearly dead_ must be utterly exhausting), the doctor says Odin can see with it. While Frigga helps him patch it when he's tired, so his brain isn't even more confused than it has to be, Loki knows she hopes he’ll eventually be able to use it properly. Perhaps best of all, with help from the physical therapist, whoever happens to be around, and his own bedrails, Odin can pull himself up into a sitting position.

On top of all that, solid food is just the icing.

Nice, rich fudge icing.

Okay, no, the real icing is that Odin still seems markedly more fond of him. Of Loki, who’s not the least bit sure he's cried this much since Paris. That said, it's a nicer kind of crying this time.

~

"I miss you," Thor says, nuzzling Loki's neck as he fills a water pitcher in Frigga’s big kitchen. "I never see you anymore."

"Never see me? What? I practically live here." Loki laughs. "How can you possibly find enough time away to miss me?" He knows what Thor means, though. He's been so busy playing nursemaid, or tutor, or whatever - and Thor, running Aes - that they really haven't gotten to spend any quality time together. Not since Oslo, and barely even then.

"Things won't be this way forever," Loki offers when Thor pouts. He’s not sure when he set aside his diva self and turned into- into such a _responsible adult_. But while little of what’s gone on the past few months - babysitting Odin, being there for Frigga, standing back and letting it happen as Thor sleepwalks through life day after day after day - has been as bad as Loki might have expected, he sincerely does hope life's finally on its way back to normal. "It's okay," he adds as Thor shushes him. “We’re okay.” It is. They are. All told, the whole shitshow has probably even been good for them

Yes, _them_. Both of them. Really.

~

“It’s different,” Leah tells Loki when he asks about her new role. Now that he’s exclusively Aes’ – and, let’s face it, finally able to look after himself a little more reliably – he doesn’t really need a full-time minder. She’d been hesitant to abandon him (and, honestly, he too had been quite anxious about being left on his own), but Darcy’d finally convinced both of them Leah was wasting her talents.

That, and Leah had been awfully bored. These days, she isn’t.

“All these new baby models,” she says, laughing. “They’re worse than you. They don’t even know how to go grocery shopping.”

Loki laughs, too. The two of them been friends – because that _is_ what they are, and these days he can even admit it – a long time now, and he’s comfortable around her. “I didn’t go grocery shopping either,” he points out.

“You were too good for it,” she says. “That’s different.”

“Careful,” he kids her. “One of these days you’re going to wake up and find you’ve turned into Darcy. But really? You like taking care of the newbies?”

“When did you turn into someone who wants everyone to be happy?” Leah laughs again. The job must be going well enough, then; she’s not a faker. “I’m starting to wonder if I’m talking to Thor, rather than Loki.”

“Oh no no. I’m still an ass,” Loki assures her. “Trust me.”

Thor bursts in through the doorway, all light and noise and flowers. “Hi, person on the phone,” he calls. It’s a nice day outside, which always makes him almost unbearably cheerful.

“See? I could never turn into _that_ ,” Loki tells Leah.

“That’s okay,” she says. “If you somehow did, I don’t think I could stand it.”


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes going in a circle isn't a bad thing.

~~o~~  
Oslo, Norway  
Epilogue, twenty years later  
~~o~~

"It never gets old, does it?" Leah rests a hand on the railing – she’s been off her crutches for months… her knee is about 90%, but she’s evidently still being cautious by habit - and looks up at the stars overhead. It's a rare clear night (this time of year in Oslo, if it's not snowing it's raining) and the air is sharply crisp. "The view, I mean. I really am glad you hung onto this place."

Loki smiles. He likes the way the sky appears courtesy of his latest pair of glasses, even if Darcy says the things make him look _bookish_. His last stint in front of the camera was years ago now - he can still remember shouting at an annoyingly cheerful artistic director about _having no plans to become the next Lauren fucking Hutton_ before stomping out the door - and the greater Tonsberg area isn't exactly paparazzi heaven; he can afford to look like a dweeb these days. Of course Darcy'd sworn she meant he looked smart and scholarly, but he knows her better than that.

The stars are as clear as clear can be, bright and lovely and twinkling. He doesn't _care_ if he looks like a loser. Honest. Not much, anyway. Or at least not particularly often.

Thor's own most recent choice in eyewear makes him look like a hot CEO. Which is exactly what he is. The whole effect is perfect. Loki's not complaining.

"Do you mind if I open another bottle?" Loki laughs at the pop of the cork. Leah shakes her head; she's grinning right along with him. She and Darcy have been a- a _something_ for over a decade now - they don't call it anything, and Loki long since gave up asking - and Leah always claims to like it that her friends are still mischievous. Some days Loki thinks it might even be the truth; she's here, isn't she?

"Yes, actually, I _do_ mind," Loki says loudly, just to catch the shocked look that flashes across Darcy's face before she (realizes she’s been had, and then) sets her half-filled glass down and play-punches him. "Oww! It's fine. Mi casa es su casa and you know it."

"That's better," Darcy says, archly. She keeps a straight face for maybe two seconds before losing her rather tipsy composure and snorting. "It's good to see you can still bring it, Loki-pokey. It’s good to see _you_ , even. How long is Thor gone for?"

It's only been a few days but it seems like forever. Loki wonders briefly when absence started freaking him out… and then remembers he's- he's pretty much always been like this. He could blame it on the wine, except for how he can’t. He’s clingy; it’s irritating. "Another week or so," he grumbles. "Through the end of the show, and then he has a couple of meetings to stick around for." Personally, Loki’s long since had enough of men's fashion week... there's no point in rattling around NYC for ten days in the inevitable gross, slushy weather. Not when he can catch up with old friends here and then pop right back down to the coast to check up on Odin. Still, he’s edgy.

"You should go," Leah says. "Towards the end. Call it an anniversary of sorts. Surprise him."

Loki frowns. "I have too much to do here," he protests, which isn't it at all. He's still afraid of being _left_ , which is deliciously ironic considering he's always been the one _doing_ the leaving. Which makes him stubborn. Stubborn, fatalistic, and cranky, actually.

"Well, his loss is our gain, then," Darcy offers with another wide smile. Her teeth are as ridiculously white and straight as Loki's. She's still an agent, after all, constantly out in the public eye. Whereas Leah's dark hair is increasingly streaked with grey, her own still shines (thanks to hundreds of dollars of fancy-ass color, no doubt). Not that he’s one to talk. "What? Less wine to buy," she clarifies, holding up the bottle and winking.

"Some things never change," Loki fires back, "do they?"

~~o~~  
Sem (Tonsberg), Norway  
Same timeframe  
~~o~~

While Thor is overseas Loki's staying at his place. It's more like _their place_ , considering they spend the better part of any given week there, but Loki's held onto what Thor affectionately terms "the cabin" anyway. Having a place to go is comforting, sometimes, and it's a good place to work on his writing. It’s pretty there, and quiet.

He doesn’t _have_ to be in Sem anyway.

Neither does Thor, actually, but realistically? Getting him out of the place just isn’t going to happen.

Volstagg's boys run the farm operation these days. They have for a while now; Volstagg himself still shows up a few days a week and bosses them around, but Loki's pretty certain that's just because he misses the place (and the sheep, and the people). He and Hilde retired once the day-to-day grind got too hard for them; they live in town, in a quaint little house that belonged to Hilde's spinster auntie. The one she clearly didn’t take after. It's still hard to picture them not needing a gazillion bedrooms, but their kids are all grown. Half of them live out at the farm anyway.

They're nice people, the lot of them... too boisterous for Loki's tastes, just like their father, but they love taking great care of sheep more than anything (but eating, maybe) and he's willing to overlook the rest on account of it. Especially given that he can hole up in Thor's place and avoid them.

Odin gets around pretty well, all things considered. He recovered better from his stroke than anyone expected, well enough to head Aes for another solid fifteen years. Things had fallen apart for a while after Frigga's death - it had wrecked him; screw that, it had wrecked _all_ of them - and that's when Thor had reluctantly taken over, but he's hale enough these days. He’s been officially retired for a while now, but he pops his shaggy grey head in often.

Thursday night Loki and Odin share fish stew and winter vegetables. The place feels a lot homier than it ought to with Frigga gone; her touch is still everywhere. That and – while Loki tries not to it admit it, especially to himself - he's really grown to like Thor's father. They dine together at least once a week, whether or not Thor's in town. Loki's not quite sure who exactly it is that’s being checked in on.

"I stopped down to Oslo," he tells Odin (unnecessarily; it's no secret, and the whole place knew he was going). He has to raise his voice, as the old man's a bit hard of hearing. "My friends there tell me I should go pay your son a visit."

"Mm," Odin hums around a mouthful of stew. He's smiling, though, and nodding. He blots his lips and nods again. "New York. Is that place he met you still in business?"

While it’s more like _didn’t meet_ , the restaurant has indeed survived. Loki'd spent most of yesterday afternoon doing research - he hasn't been in the city for six or seven years now but, with the exception of a full fleet of driverless automatic taxis, things don’t seem to have changed significantly - and the little French-Moroccan bar is still right where he left it. The original proprietor's daughter and son-in-law are running it these days. From the pictures and the menu everything is just like it was all those years ago. "Mm." He nods. "Good idea," he tells Odin, mostly because he's just had one.

~

The place Loki stayed on that fateful night, on the other hand, is no longer even a hotel. Instead, it’s been converted to high-end Village apartments. Which is okay; he’s not sure he could tolerate a night there anyway. Especially not if it’s cold and raining. Too many memories. And now that men’s fashion week has finally taken on the same importance as its longer-lived feminine counterpart, a lot of the best hotels in New York are packed. At least, they’re full when it comes to the class of room Loki always favors. Someone at his former agency takes care of everything, though; there’s a long back-story about favors and friends of friends – he doesn’t care, honestly, so he doesn’t pay nearly enough attention – and then he’s all set to stay the night in someone’s cousin’s Christopher Street penthouse. The owner’s rumored to be in St. Moritz, getting away from the winter weather. Her housekeeper, Loki’s assured, will have it ready.

He loves his old agency. They take care of _everything_ , from car service to Oslo to his bags (yes, plural; he’s never needed to get the knack of traveling light) and tickets. It’s not something they have to do, not anymore, but they haven’t forgotten his is the face (and the body) that made them famous. And that’s not a bad feeling.

~

The end of the weekend finally comes. Loki can’t remember the last time he was this nervous, or a week passed even half this slowly. Tomorrow, he’s going to be leaving Norway. "Hey, darling," he says nonchalantly when he and Thor talk before bed. Well, before _his_ bed… where Thor is, along the United States’ east coast, it's not even suppertime. "Remember that place you saw me? But thought you didn't? I looked it up and it's still around. You should stop over and have a meal there. For old times’ sake.” Or something.

Thor clears his throat. “Are you sure?” Even with today’s technology it’s an international call; Loki can’t be sure, but he sounds sad and worried. Maybe looking back is a little odd for both of them. “It will be weird without you there. Almost like I looked and _didn’t_ find you.”

Loki frowns. He should have known Thor would make this unexpectedly complicated. “You don’t have to stay for a meal if you- can’t,” he assures Thor. “Just have a drink. And take some pictures. Of the bar, of course, and the table where I was sitting. But I hope you have a bite or two… the food there was really good. It probably still is. Maybe sometime we can go back there together.”

Unsurprisingly, having a project must give Thor something besides himself to focus on. “Right. I can do that,” he tells Loki without hesitation. “I miss you, Lo. I should have made you come with me.”

“Right,” Loki says, drily. “Good luck with that one.”

~

The flight itself is fine. He’s in first class, of course, with a sleeper seat and a soft Aes blanket… oh, and a couple of nice cocktails to tide him over. It’s the sleeping itself that’s a struggle. Which is stupid – it’s been a quarter of a century since he last slept around on anyone (not Thor!), and he’s reasonably sure Thor never has - but even after all this time together Loki can’t quite shake the nagging fear that some lovely, nubile young model will move in and take away the part of his life he’s worked the hardest for.

~

By the time he gets to the (lovely) apartment, Loki’s exhausted and at least halfway crazy. “Take a nap,” Leah orders when he calls her, panicking. “It’s New York. You’ve got hours before you’ll even have to think about dinner.”

~

Loki slides open the door and pokes his head out onto the balcony. This time of year the weather here is a lot like Oslo’s. Not in a good way; sure enough, there’s a cold drizzle falling. The streetlamps have halos and the cold makes every single underground steam vent visible. He swallows down a short burst of annoyance; the restaurant is a casual neighborhood place, at least for the city, and he doesn’t need to look spotlessly beautiful. His hair can be a frizzy mess and no one will even notice.

Even so, it takes him forever to get ready. And of course he takes what Leah jokingly called _a robocab_ ; what’s the point in having money if you have to walk blocks in this weather?

~

He takes a deep breath and looks around. He’s gotten there earlier than Thor, which was the whole idea in the first place. The bar is hopping but the back of the restaurant is still quiet enough that he can get “his” table with his agency reservation. Loki orders a drink to steady his jittery nerves and gets in some quality people watching while he’s waiting.

~

“The place looks great!” Loki jumps. Thor’s voice with its ridiculously out-of-town accent booms out over the noisy bar. “I love what you’ve done with it. Of course I haven’t been here in forever, not since your father was still hosting.”

He sounds cheerful. Normal. In the mirror, he’s reassuringly alone. All the same, Loki’s heart is hammering.

~

“Can I buy that gentleman’s wine,” he asks his waitress a few minutes later. “The tall, blonde one.” It’s going to be easy; Thor has pulled up a stool and is perusing the menu. The big dolt hasn’t even bothered to look around. If he weren’t here too, Loki knows, Thor would probably even forget half the pictures.

Then again, from the looks of it, Thor _did_ order prosecco. Loki can see the flute from twenty feet away, sparkling and tiny against Thor’s long fingers.

“Of course, sir,” she tells him, nicely. “May I give him a message?”

Loki makes himself smile. He can do this. Really, he can. “Only that I want to thank him. Because, you know, he reminds me of someone.”

~~o~~

Fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are at the end of an odd little road. Thank you to everyone who read this, and who stopped to comment or even just to think about something from the story. It's an honor to provide food for thought for any of you.
> 
> Yes, the end is a bit vague. That's intentional; apologies to those it bothers. I didn't like the idea of tying this one up too tightly; I'd rather let you imagine what you'd like (or expect) might come afterwards.


End file.
